This is a unique contribution to LBGTQ literature and the first book by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into...
A young woman chooses to be her true self rather than conform in Equatorial Guinea.
Okomo is an orphan. Her mother died during childbirth, and no one will tell the teenager who her father is. She lives with her maternal grandparents, both of whom are eager for her to get married. The only member of her family who truly loves her for herself is her uncle Marcelo. Both Okomo and Marcelo feel repressed by village life and the strict requirements of Fang culture. Marcelo is expected to impregnate a woman of their tribe cursed with an infertile husband. Okomo is expected to enrich her family by finding a wealthy husband. But Marcelo is attracted to men, and Okomo loves a girl named Dina. The Fang call Marcelo a “man-woman,” and he is finally exiled to the forest for his sexuality. As for Okomo, there is no Fang word for her. “It’s like you don’t exist,” Marcelo tells her. The setting sets this apart from most gay fiction published in the United States. Okomo is growing up in the 2000s, but her sexual coming-of-age echoes similar stories from much earlier American eras. Okomo isn’t just an oppressed minority; she is something that most of the people around her have never imagined. She doesn’t even understand herself until she meets others like her. Obono’s storytelling style is straightforward and her language is unadorned. This gives her slender novel the feel of a folktale, but an inverted one. While folktales most often reinforce social norms, this novel subverts them. The forest here is not a place of danger; it is a place of refuge for those who have no place in their community. The heroine’s true family is, ultimately, her family of choice, and she doesn’t embrace her true nature by claiming her birthright or fulfilling her prescribed role but rather by accepting herself fully: as a bastarda—the child of an unmarried woman—and as a lesbian.
This is a unique contribution to LBGTQ literature and the first book by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English.Pub Date: April 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-936932-23-8
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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