A tragicomedy that blends traditional customs and family intrigue.
In her first play, shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, Akpabio (Little Devils, 2013, etc.) crafts a modern morality tale about maternity, magic and being careful what you wish for.
Set largely in 2009, this tragicomedy centers on the Umoh family of Lagos, Nigeria, and draws on folk tales, Shakespearean tragedy, and the works of the poet and novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Businessman Aniekan and his wife, Celia, have been blessed with three daughters—but only after long years of barrenness. The play takes perhaps too much for granted in its line “We all know what childlessness means to the African woman,” but its characters’ effusive expressions of gratitude to God reinforce the primacy of parenthood. Celia, who secretly underwent a hysterectomy following a miscarriage, finally accepts that she cannot have more children, but her mother-in-law keeps pressuring her to bear a son; she hints that if Celia cannot produce an heir, Ani must take a second wife. The timing then seems suspect when Ani’s former secretary announces that he fathered her son, Ubong, eight years ago. Ani wants to adopt Ubong, but a jealous Celia employs a babalawo, a witch doctor, to prevent the boy from infiltrating the family. In the unfolding conspiracy to install Ubong or keep him out, many characters turn out to be not quite what they seem. Some monologues can seem overcomplicated, especially as Ani’s friend Gerry (jokingly referred to as “Sherlock Holmes”) sets out the scheming step by step. This leads to overlong text blocks, with stage directions and dialogue the only way of cramming in descriptions and machinations. The Nigerian names and British vocabulary may prove challenging, while accurate recording of African English means article and preposition use are inconsistent. Still, Akpabio successfully weaves in local superstitions and speech patterns. An interfering mother-in-law and a servant speaking in dialect (“Sir, Mama say she wan rest. She go eat later”) may seem like clichés, but they are two of the more amusing characters and bring to mind Adichie’s comic achievements. However, Akpabio maintains an appropriately bittersweet tone, even when a poisoning plot looks set to follow Hamlet into darker territory.
A tragicomedy that blends traditional customs and family intrigue.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2009
ISBN: 978-1847485748
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Athena Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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