THE BEAD COLLECTOR

Name: THE BEAD COLLECTOR
Author: Sefi Atta
ISBN: 978-1-62371-985-2

by Sefi Atta ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2018

Despite the fascinating combination of post–civil war Nigeria and good gossip, Atta’s novel can’t quite overcome the ennui...

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A glimpse into the insular world of upper-class Nigeria during the mid-1970s.

Remi Lawal is a middle-aged shop owner living in the exclusive Ikoyi neighborhood of Lagos in 1976. When she meets Frances Cooke, an American art dealer who has come to Nigeria to collect beads that are seemingly valuable to everyone but Nigerians, it begins a series of tête-à-têtes between the two in which Remi describes life among Nigeria’s elite while Frances offers comparatively little about herself. What looms over Remi’s descriptions of Nigerian life, however, is the question of whether Frances is a CIA agent, an idea initially floated by Remi’s husband, Tunde, a banker who has recently been “retired” from his government job due to a military coup. Despite Tunde’s understandable suspicions, Remi is unconvinced and proceeds to invite Frances into her inner circle, wherein larger questions of colonialism, marriage, motherhood, and Nigerian identity are interwoven with the everyday occurrences that make up Remi’s rather privileged life. Unfortunately, the award-winning Atta (A Bit of Difference, 2012), though meticulous in rehearsing the various maneuvers that have gotten Nigeria to this moment, overburdens the first half of the novel with details of Remi’s daily life that could have been left on the cutting-room floor. The novel doesn’t really find its legs until the second half, when it finally crescendos with yet another coup and an incident at a golf club, in which Frances plays a key role, which could rival a reality-TV show starring bored and moneyed housewives.

Despite the fascinating combination of post–civil war Nigeria and good gossip, Atta’s novel can’t quite overcome the ennui that dominates the life of its main character.

Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-62371-985-2

Page Count: 370

Publisher: Interlink

Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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MATING

by Norman Rush ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1991

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Plaudits for the concept of a woman pursuing and getting her intellectual equal, but, here, gabby and relentlessly high-minded lovers turn Rush's first novel (after the story collection, Whites, 1986) into a meeting of true minds with too long an agenda. When a 30-ish unnamed American woman discovers that her anthropological thesis, which she had come to research in Botswana, is invalid, she decides to be ``hedonic, think passim about my life and next steps'' and ``repose in the white utopia Gaborone was.'' Which she does until she meets the legendary Nelson Denoon, guru of rural development, preacher of a third way for African countries, and rumored to be in charge of a distant village, Tsau, run by and for women. Intrigued by his brilliance and reputation, the woman sets off alone across the Botswana desert, nearly dying in the attempt but finally reaching Tsau. The village is the vehicle for Denoon's ideas about women (``Every female is a golden loom''), religion (religious buildings are banned in Tsau), education, solar power, and just about everything else. The love affair— exhaustively annotated and dissected all in the first person—is inevitable, and though they make agreeable love and though Denoon is all that he should be, it is the talk that matters—''I love your mind,'' she proclaims. They talk up a storm on everything from the ANC in South Africa to the anarchosyndicalists of Spain. But Tsau is not quite paradise—serpents exist, and Denoon himself changes after an accident in the desert, where he may have undergone a religious experience. Our heroine, disenchanted, returns to the US, but a mysterious message from Africa provokes her curiosity—she might venture another investigation of this most unusual man. In essence a love story, an unusual and credible one, with an exotic locale, and a colorful supporting cast; but the nonstop clever talk eventually provokes irritation rather than sympathy. A flawed novel of too many ideas, many good, but collectively too much.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-394-54472-2

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
SUBTLE BODIES
by Norman Rush

- BOOK REVIEW
MORTALS
by Norman Rush

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HORSEMAN, PASS BY

A NOVEL

by Larry McMurtry ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1961

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A simply told, warm, rather melancholy tale of changing times in the small ranch country of Texas. On old-time cowboy Grandad's ranch, old and new generations are uneasily mixed. Second wife Grandma complains and listens to the radio; her vicious son is obsessed with town, care and women. Lonnie, his grandson by the first marriage, likes Grandad, the land, life and its people, but is restless and lonely and ambiguously drawn to the easy-going Negro women, Helmea, who is the real mother of the household. Many tensions erupt and when Helmea is raped by one of the men (a terrible, pitiful scene), she leaves and the household collapses. The cattle, infected, are shot and buried by bulldozers and the old man, too, dies inside. Lonnie, at loose ends, goes off to the rodeo and returns to find Grandad in a ditch, terribly injured, later to be shot in a "mercy killing". Lonnie, finding that the old way of life is lost, sets out to drift... The isolation and the homely, tangible beauty of small ranch life removes the taint of melodrama from this tale. The people (especially Nelmas), the country, the cattle are real. Grandad's way of life is strong-and can only be killed violently - so that it is a fitting end that he meets.