A rich, absorbing story of destinies intertwined across time and space.
In this novel, Kenya is the center of three lives connected by blood and friendship.
In Part 1, it’s 1952, and Kenya—long under colonial rule—is seeing violent clashes as the British try to put down the Mau Mau uprising. Atrocities and police raids affect the small village of Kĩandutu, home of 14-year-old Wambũi Karanja. Gifted in mathematics, Wambũi is accepted at a prestigious Kenyan boarding school, where she gains a mentor and friend in her White mathematics teacher, Eileen Atwood. Wambũi eventually marries shopkeeper Mwangi Kĩng’ori, discovering in herself an unexpected talent for business. In Part 2, Eileen is forced into retirement in 1989 and returns to England, where she feels like a stranger after more than 40 years away. Meanwhile, Wambũi’s son, Raymond, becomes a doctor, taking a residency at a Chicago hospital, where he experiences both prejudice and success. In his debut novel, Githaiga writes in the great realist tradition, sometimes recalling Victorian novelists like Dickens or, more recently, Vikram Seth. He paints on a wide canvas—investigating points of view of those disparate in age, gender, and nationality with equal attention and skill—in prose that’s lively but dignified. For example: “homesickness, that erstwhile banished companion, began to make an unwelcome comeback.” Racism is an important theme in the novel, all the more effectively explored because Githaiga uses a scalpel, not a hammer. Wambũi, taking the train to boarding school, notices a sign reading “WHITES ONLY. She turned left and continued walking.” Also thoughtfully considered is the complexity of immigration, as with Eileen’s story. Home, to her, is Kenya, where she’s never become a citizen.
A rich, absorbing story of destinies intertwined across time and space.Pub Date: May 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73504-170-4
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Bon Esprit Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fresh, often funny, always poignant take on the coming-of-age novel.
After a loss, a young British woman from a Ghanaian family reassesses her responsibilities.
Her name is Maddie, but the young protagonist in George’s engaging coming-of-age novel has always been known to her family as Maame, meaning woman. On the surface, this nickname is praise for Maddie’s reliability. Though she’s only 25, she works full time at a London publishing house and cares for her father, who’s in the late stages of Parkinson’s disease. Maddie’s older brother, James, has little interest in helping out, and their mother is living in Ghana and running the business she inherited from her own father. When she needs money, she always calls Maddie, who shoulders these expectations and burdens without complaint, never telling her friends about her frustrations: “We’re Ghanaian, so we do things differently” is an idea that's ingrained in her. Her only confidant is Google, to whom she types desperate questions and gets only moderately helpful responses. (Google does not truly understand the demands of a religious yet remote African-born mother.) But when Maddie loses her job and tragedy strikes, she begins to question the limits of family duty and wonders what sort of life she can create for herself. With a light but firm touch, George illustrates the casual racism a young Black woman can face in the British (or American) workplace and how cultural barriers can stand in the way of aspects of contemporary life such as understanding and treating depression. She examines Maddie’s awkward steps toward adulthood and its messy stew of responsibility, love, and sex with insight and compassion. The key to writing a memorable bildungsroman is creating an unforgettable character, and George has fashioned an appealing hero here: You can’t help but root for Maddie’s emancipation. Funny, awkward, and sometimes painful, her blossoming is a real delight to witness.
A fresh, often funny, always poignant take on the coming-of-age novel.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-2502-8252-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.
Who was Shakespeare?
Move over, Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon: There’s another contender for the true author of plays attributed to the bard of Stratford—Emilia Bassano, a clever, outspoken, educated woman who takes center stage in Picoult’s spirited novel. Of Italian heritage, from a family of court musicians, Emilia was a hidden Jew and the courtesan of a much older nobleman who vetted plays to be performed for Queen Elizabeth. She was well traveled—unlike Shakespeare, she visited Italy and Denmark, where, Picoult imagines, she may have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—and was familiar with court intrigue and English law. “Every gap in Shakespeare’s life or knowledge that has had to be explained away by scholars, she somehow fills,” Picoult writes. Encouraged by her lover, Emilia wrote plays and poetry, but 16th-century England was not ready for a female writer. Picoult interweaves Emilia’s story with that of her descendant Melina Green, an aspiring playwright, who encounters the same sexist barriers to making herself heard that Emilia faced. In alternating chapters, Picoult follows Melina’s frustrated efforts to get a play produced—a play about Emilia, who Melina is certain sold her work to Shakespeare. Melina’s play, By Any Other Name, “wasn’t meant to be a fiction; it was meant to be the resurrection of an erasure.” Picoult creates a richly detailed portrait of daily life in Elizabethan England, from sumptuous castles to seedy hovels. Melina’s story is less vivid: Where Emilia found support from the witty Christopher Marlowe, Melina has a fashion-loving gay roommate; where Emilia faces the ravages of repeated outbreaks of plague, for Melina, Covid-19 occurs largely offstage; where Emilia has a passionate affair with the adoring Earl of Southampton, Melina’s lover is an awkward New York Times theater critic. It’s Emilia’s story, and Picoult lovingly brings her to life.
A vibrant tale of a remarkable woman.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9780593497210
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2024
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