Doomi Golo: Netali by Boubacar Boris Diop - When I read online that there was a novel written entirely in Wolof, I immediately set out to find it. At worst, I thought, it would be good for the fact of being written in my native language, even if it was a terrible novel - I approached it ready to excuse any amount of bad plotting and writing. I had nothing to worry about - it turned out to be one of the best novels I had ever read. My gushing review does not do it justice - I wish I had enough time to spend many years studying this novel, so I could write a dissertation about it. In the end it was more than just a novel to me: it also opened up a window into the world of Wolof possibility, and let me peer through, and what I saw was breathtaking, and beautiful, and heartbreaking, and everything I never imagined I would ever encounter in a written work in my language.
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig - Possible my favorite book of 2009. Novel about two men - one of them gay, the other a political prisoner - locked up in a prison cell together. One tells the other stories to help alleviate the boredom of being imprisoned. This is the main premise of the novel, but it comes together as so much more. Each of the embedded stories is in itself fully fleshed out and could have made this a great novel; the frame story in which they are embedded however is what makes it spectacular to read in the end, a touching portrayal of the point at which two people's lives touch in unexpected ways which leaves your heart heavy.
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware - I have been trying to read more graphic novels lately, and the more I read them the more I find them as good as the best novels in their own right. Jimmy Corrigan is astonishing - it is the story of a sad little man, and a chronicle of his family. Before I read this I knew the meaning of the word "anti-hero", but only on an intellectual level - reading this I finally realized what the word truly meant. Jimmy is not very likeable - neither are some of the other main sub-characters (such as his grandfather), and yet never once through the book do you feel disconnected from them, or stop pitying them, or see themselves and their searches for a good life reflected in yours.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - This year I realized David Mitchell was in fact one of my favorite writers. I had read Black Swan Green (which does not appear here but was a book I enjoyed immensely), and was about half-way through this book when I realized that I was almost breathless, and kept going back to re-read sections I especially admired, all symptoms, it dawned on me, I had suffered from while reading other David Mitchell books. Cloud Atlas is made up of a collection of inter-connected stories, and while the connection is rather tenuous at times, the stories never fail to entertain. They all possess that cliff-hanger quality which is usually reserved for trash lit - so much "real literature" is boring. Boring this book is not, and I eagerly await the next book from David Mitchell.
Graceland by Chris Abani - "Dis Elvis, you no get faith. Television is the new oracle.", said by one of the characters in Chris Abani's Graceland to another character, is my favorite quote of the year. I have always admired the Nigerian novelists for their sense of humour, which coupled with their penetrating understanding of humans makes them fantastic writers (see, e.g., the war rape scene with the house boy in Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, which manages to make you laugh even as you feel absolutely horrified). Chris Abani is a writer I need to read more of in 2010 - I saw his TED talk about telling stories, which is what led me to this book, which I gulped down in a few days, and was greatly captivated by.
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvin - In 2009 I discovered the magic of Italo Calvino. I had previously tried reading "If on a winter's night a traveler..." but had not finished it. I picked this up and from the first story I was hooked. It is not so much a collection of stories as an exploration of the symbols that make up stories, and how they come together, and the effects these symbols have on us the readers. After this I read "Invisible Cities", and enjoyed that very much, though there will never be another collection of stories quite like Cosmicomics for me.
The Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Kim Deitch - About a comic artist driven mad by a creature he imagined one night during a weed high, I read this book in a haze on a visit to San Francisco. It is one of the strangest books I have ever read, its very structure like a plan for madness, with just enough sanity to make everything logical and connected (in a twisted kind of way), but not quite enough to escape the black hole of insanity around it.
Lush Life: A Novel by Richard Price - I am a great fan of The Wire, and greatly envy my room mate, who is on his first time through the show, his ability to go home at the end of the work day and open a new episode fresh, without knowing what will happen next. Now imagine The Wire in book form, complete with the realistic, gritty dialogue that series is known for, as well as the pace driving the action forward with never a stop for respite. This book is that, and more. I read it on a 7-hour bus trip to New York. When night fell, and the bus overhead lights refused to work, I leaned against the window and still read it, first from the insufficient daylight coming in, and then the passing lights of other cars on the highway. I could barely put it down.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation,... by M.T. Anderson - There are books which set off at a fast pace, and keep up that pace throughout, such as Lush Life, and Cloud Atlass. Then there are ones which start off slowly, and keep this slow pace throughout, so if you are not paying attention you may dismiss them, but if you are at some point the payoff will happen, and it will suddenly dawn on you that you have been reading for two hours straight, and your internal rhythm had become synchronized with the rhythm of the book, and your internal thoughts had started to sound like the voice of the book. This book - and its predecessor in the series - are those kind of books. It is set in the time before the American Civil War, and follows the live of a slave called Octavian Nothing, who is part of an experiment by a college of scientists. You know a book is good when you are reading a long discourse on philosophy in a section about the behavior of man, and it is one of the most touching things you have read all year.
Aya of Yop City by Marguerite Abouet - A comic book set in Ivory Coast, following the adventures of a young girl called Aya. So much of this felt so real it would feel for a moment as if I was back home, sitting in the front yard watching my sister do her friend's hair, while outside on the street the woman next door sold fried pancakes which she mad while you waited.
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James - Set in Jamaica during the days of slavery, and told entirely in Jamaican Patois, this is another book I found it hard to put down. Like Doomi Golo, the author could have based the success of the novel on the gimmick of language alone. Instead he used the language merely as a means, telling a compelling story with characters so human you can imagine them after you close the book.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Our Collective Amnesia: Review of "A Living Mirror - The Life of Deyda Hydara"
Books and newspapers are very important in a society. They act as our collective memory, the things we can always go back to to take another look at events, to recognize repeating patterns in them, and to understand them. Whilst newspapers are of necessity published in a rush (there is a deadline, and it must be met - the paper must be out on the streets by so-and-so time), books have the luxury of being more meditated-upon, and are often better thought-out as a result. Authors can take years writing a single book - no one complains. This gives the authors of books a great advantage over newspaper writers and editors - the advantage of time, the ability to look at the bigger picture instead of just immediate events, and to allow events to reach their full maturity before commenting on them.
"A Living Mirror: The Life of Deyda Hydara" is one such book, written by Aloa Ahmed Alota and Demba Ali Jawo. It is a biography of Deyda Hydara, the Point editor who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2004.
The book begins with Deyda as a young man, playing football on the streets of Banjul. We follow him as he is signed up, almost accidentally, for the French school, where he performs so well he is allowed to go to Dakar to complete his studies. These studies are cut short (though not before here, too, he has demonstrated his intelligence by already beginning to read philosophers such as Sartre. "Your verb conjugation is excellent", his teacher remarks on his first test) after his guardian becomes unable to afford the school fees any longer. He returns home and gets a job at Radio Syd, and the book follows his activites as he falls in love, gets married,and quits the Radio job to start a newspaper. We see, at the beginning, Deyda the man.
The middle part of the book is devoted to a series of Socratic-type dialogues Deyda had with one of his editors, during which they speak on various issues raised in articles Deyda wrote for the Point, ranging from the power of government to the rights of women. In them Deyda is presented as a learned man with very strong views on issues, and the editor as humble student asking just the right questions to keep the debate flowing, pausing only to read out relevant sections from articles as he is ordered to by Deyda. This part would perhaps have been a bit more interesting if the editor had acted as devil's advocate, arguing against some of the points Deyda made, making the discussion more lively. As it is, though, we do manage to hear of some of Deyda's opinions, and the ways in which he justified them.
Right at the end, we are told about the Point newspaper's 13th anniversary party - the speeches given that night, the dancing, the visit from the new US ambassador. And as the evening progresses, and we learn about the two female co-workers Deyda was planning to give lifts to their houses that night, we suddenly begin to realize what this entails. (There were two women in the car, when the shootings happened). The prose really flows here - you can feel the authors' emotions, as well as the emotions of the people who must have told them the tale. And then, after the unmarked Benz draws up to Deyda's car, and he is shot, after the assassins have escaped, we follow the ones left behind, their reactions recorded as they each get the news - some fainting, some in denial and going to check for themselves, some unable to accept that this was really happening. Not surprisingly, this part of the book was the most well-written.
There are a few little problems with the book, ones which can certainly be excused for having happened to first-time authors [both writers have worked for major Gambian newspapers in the past, but had not published a book before this one, as far as I know]. One of these problems is the excessive use of cliched expressions, especially in the first half of the book. Take, for example, this passage from page 57:
Deyda rocks on "a springy step", especially when he is "bowled over"? There are more passages like this which add to a certain sense of unneeded clutter in the narrative, sometimes getting in the way of the story. [Deyda's uncannily prescient declaration that he would be shot, for example is referred to as a "hoary old chestnut" amongst his staff, a metaphor which just does not sound right given both the context and the expected readership].
Right from the beginning the authors admit to having "adopted a fiction style" for presenting the life story they had before them, in order to make it more engaging to the reader. This is rarely a problem - it actually does help the book flow - though sometimes it leaves you wondering what really happened, and what the authors made up to fill in the gaps. On page 85, there is an encounter between Deyda and the Gambia Press Union lawyer selected to represent the GPU in court:
As biography, the book does not work as well as would be expected. The subject as presented is too flat. At meetings and press conferences he is always mowing the opponents down with his superior words, and they in their turn always clapping and cheering at his every utterance. He is always cheerful and happy and optimistic (almost superhumanly so), he is never afraid, he never has doubts.
It is instead as chronicle of media repression in this country that the book does a marvellous job, covering everything from the advent of Radio Syd to the debates in the National Assembly about the creation of a National Media Commission, and the subsequent attempts at parley by the Minister of Communications at the time. None of this is covered in any history curricula in the country, and most of it is information that could have been acquired only by talking directly to the persons involved, so bad has our societal amnesia become. Alota and Jawo have done us an invaluable service in putting this important part of the history of our democracy between two covers, adding to the store of collective memory in place for future generations.
After the main story itself, the book contains a series of photos of Deyda, and two appendices. The first appendix is made up of tributes written by his peers, all condemning the murder, all putting in words the horror and outrage felt by the whole country. The second one is a selection of articles, mainly from his "Good Morning Mr President" column in the Point newspaper. As we read these, and get closer and closer to his fatal hour, we cannot help but be struck by how brave he was, how he dared say the things which other people did or would not, in always clear and sometimes brilliant prose, never condescending, always taking the time to argue out his case, presenting the facts as he saw them. And it is the articles in this appendix which in the end convince us of the point the main story was trying to make all along: what we can see in these writings is the reflection of a man who until the last stuck to his beliefs - and died rather than relinquish them. If "patriot" wasn't such an overused, meaningless term these days in the country, I'd even call him a true patriot. The country is sorely in need of men like him once more.
You can find out more about the book by visiting deydahydara.com
"A Living Mirror: The Life of Deyda Hydara" is one such book, written by Aloa Ahmed Alota and Demba Ali Jawo. It is a biography of Deyda Hydara, the Point editor who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2004.
The book begins with Deyda as a young man, playing football on the streets of Banjul. We follow him as he is signed up, almost accidentally, for the French school, where he performs so well he is allowed to go to Dakar to complete his studies. These studies are cut short (though not before here, too, he has demonstrated his intelligence by already beginning to read philosophers such as Sartre. "Your verb conjugation is excellent", his teacher remarks on his first test) after his guardian becomes unable to afford the school fees any longer. He returns home and gets a job at Radio Syd, and the book follows his activites as he falls in love, gets married,and quits the Radio job to start a newspaper. We see, at the beginning, Deyda the man.
The middle part of the book is devoted to a series of Socratic-type dialogues Deyda had with one of his editors, during which they speak on various issues raised in articles Deyda wrote for the Point, ranging from the power of government to the rights of women. In them Deyda is presented as a learned man with very strong views on issues, and the editor as humble student asking just the right questions to keep the debate flowing, pausing only to read out relevant sections from articles as he is ordered to by Deyda. This part would perhaps have been a bit more interesting if the editor had acted as devil's advocate, arguing against some of the points Deyda made, making the discussion more lively. As it is, though, we do manage to hear of some of Deyda's opinions, and the ways in which he justified them.
Right at the end, we are told about the Point newspaper's 13th anniversary party - the speeches given that night, the dancing, the visit from the new US ambassador. And as the evening progresses, and we learn about the two female co-workers Deyda was planning to give lifts to their houses that night, we suddenly begin to realize what this entails. (There were two women in the car, when the shootings happened). The prose really flows here - you can feel the authors' emotions, as well as the emotions of the people who must have told them the tale. And then, after the unmarked Benz draws up to Deyda's car, and he is shot, after the assassins have escaped, we follow the ones left behind, their reactions recorded as they each get the news - some fainting, some in denial and going to check for themselves, some unable to accept that this was really happening. Not surprisingly, this part of the book was the most well-written.
There are a few little problems with the book, ones which can certainly be excused for having happened to first-time authors [both writers have worked for major Gambian newspapers in the past, but had not published a book before this one, as far as I know]. One of these problems is the excessive use of cliched expressions, especially in the first half of the book. Take, for example, this passage from page 57:
By now the lanky, sunken-cheeked adoscelent Deyda had developed into a beefy-faced, well-rounded adult with a bulky frame. He rocked on a springy step, especially when a journalistic scoop or a well-written story bowled him over.
Deyda rocks on "a springy step", especially when he is "bowled over"? There are more passages like this which add to a certain sense of unneeded clutter in the narrative, sometimes getting in the way of the story. [Deyda's uncannily prescient declaration that he would be shot, for example is referred to as a "hoary old chestnut" amongst his staff, a metaphor which just does not sound right given both the context and the expected readership].
Right from the beginning the authors admit to having "adopted a fiction style" for presenting the life story they had before them, in order to make it more engaging to the reader. This is rarely a problem - it actually does help the book flow - though sometimes it leaves you wondering what really happened, and what the authors made up to fill in the gaps. On page 85, there is an encounter between Deyda and the Gambia Press Union lawyer selected to represent the GPU in court:
Deyda stared at [the lawyer] and asked her for the umpteenth time, "Are you sure you'd like to represent us in court?"
[She] smiled and waved her hands in the air. "I've told you again and again that I can and will take up the case".
Deyda beamed. "You mean you can stop the National Media Commission from emasculating the independent media?"
"I'll fight it out in court."
"And I'll use my newspaper to enlighten the public on the ominous danger the NMC Act posed to freedom of expression in this country."
They both laughed.
This sounds more like actors reading from a script than an actual conversation between two people. This kind of set up happens a few more times in the book, but is a small price to pay to have the rest of it flow the way it does.[She] smiled and waved her hands in the air. "I've told you again and again that I can and will take up the case".
Deyda beamed. "You mean you can stop the National Media Commission from emasculating the independent media?"
"I'll fight it out in court."
"And I'll use my newspaper to enlighten the public on the ominous danger the NMC Act posed to freedom of expression in this country."
They both laughed.
As biography, the book does not work as well as would be expected. The subject as presented is too flat. At meetings and press conferences he is always mowing the opponents down with his superior words, and they in their turn always clapping and cheering at his every utterance. He is always cheerful and happy and optimistic (almost superhumanly so), he is never afraid, he never has doubts.
It is instead as chronicle of media repression in this country that the book does a marvellous job, covering everything from the advent of Radio Syd to the debates in the National Assembly about the creation of a National Media Commission, and the subsequent attempts at parley by the Minister of Communications at the time. None of this is covered in any history curricula in the country, and most of it is information that could have been acquired only by talking directly to the persons involved, so bad has our societal amnesia become. Alota and Jawo have done us an invaluable service in putting this important part of the history of our democracy between two covers, adding to the store of collective memory in place for future generations.
After the main story itself, the book contains a series of photos of Deyda, and two appendices. The first appendix is made up of tributes written by his peers, all condemning the murder, all putting in words the horror and outrage felt by the whole country. The second one is a selection of articles, mainly from his "Good Morning Mr President" column in the Point newspaper. As we read these, and get closer and closer to his fatal hour, we cannot help but be struck by how brave he was, how he dared say the things which other people did or would not, in always clear and sometimes brilliant prose, never condescending, always taking the time to argue out his case, presenting the facts as he saw them. And it is the articles in this appendix which in the end convince us of the point the main story was trying to make all along: what we can see in these writings is the reflection of a man who until the last stuck to his beliefs - and died rather than relinquish them. If "patriot" wasn't such an overused, meaningless term these days in the country, I'd even call him a true patriot. The country is sorely in need of men like him once more.
You can find out more about the book by visiting deydahydara.com
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Monday, October 15, 2007
Finding Books in The Gambia
For the rich bibliophile, there's always Timbooktoo, the country's only bookshop. But as Dr King said in her Gambian literature lecture, the average price of a novel at Timbooktoo is more than the price of a bag of rice, which puts it out of the range of most people in the country. So the rest of us have to find other options. Here's how I satisfy my book habit:
1) The National Library: This is located in Banjul, near Gambia High. Just go to Arch 22 and ask any passers-by for directions - they'll tell you where to go. It's the one single place which makes me feel every time I go there that my tax money is being put to good use - they have loads and loads of books, from novels to non-fiction works to even a section dedicated to Gambian literature. Recently there has been a great increase in the number of prize-winning, critically acclaimed books on their shelves, mainly due to the efforts of the Chief Librarian, Mr Mbye, who is as bookish as they come. So much so that they are running out of space on their shelves, and having to have new ones made. You can get a ticket, which lets you borrow 3 books at a time, for D60 a year (I tell my Mum it's the best D60 I spend every year, and it is, for the returns I get from it). It is also usually empty but for a few people, and so you can sit in there and read for hours on end without interruption. (Exception: during school exam periods, when it is swarming with students fighting for seats to do their swotting in).
The National Library also has a branch in Brikama, as well as a "mobile library", which travels up-country.
2) The Internet: Your mileage may vary, depending on how much Internet access you have, but the Internet is one of the best places to find reading material. For example, my reading list every week includes The New Yorker (they have an excellent fiction section), Harpers, The Guardian Book Section, Wordsbody (an African Literary blog), African Writing (a magazine of african writing), just to name a few. You can usually find stuff by doing a google search for the name of the publication you're interested in, or the name of an author (e.g. searching for "Binyavanga Wainaina", one of my favorite African writers, brings up thousands of hits). You can then either read these online, or print them out for later consumption at home.
3) Second-hand book stalls: These are scattered all over the Banjul-Serekunda area, and usually consist of little more than a guy with a mat and a wooden display on the sidewalk, selling (photocopied) versions of the current books on the high school literature curriculum, as well as a few second-hand novels and non-fiction books. My favorite is located in Banjul, near the turn-table just before Albert Market - the guy's name is Alex, and you can't miss him: he's right there on the sidewalk, opposite the park. Whenever I feel the book-hoarding urge kicking in, I head there and spend a glorious fifteen minutes perusing the books he has on sale. The list changes every time I go, and I always get something (he will go inside and get you more from his "book box" if you ask nicely). Since I started going there, I have acquired everything from Penelope Lively to Terry Pratchett, from a book on the history of warfare to an introduction to Marxist theory. All for the extremely cheap price of D25 per title (and less if you're buying more: you can usually talk him into giving you three for D60, for example). You can't beat that.
4) Your friends: There aren't any book clubs, exactly (at least, not that I know of), but there is a literary community, in the sense of "people who read good books". Ask around - you might be surprised. I have more than a hundred books in my personal collection, and would be very interested in swapping with someone. I'm sure there are others out there. Contact them, and ask politely - most bibliophiles I know are usually very open when it comes to books, and will be willing to share. Of course, what would be nice is if someone started a Gambian lit mag, or at least a book club, to rally all of us around.
If you have any other tips, add them to the comments below.
1) The National Library: This is located in Banjul, near Gambia High. Just go to Arch 22 and ask any passers-by for directions - they'll tell you where to go. It's the one single place which makes me feel every time I go there that my tax money is being put to good use - they have loads and loads of books, from novels to non-fiction works to even a section dedicated to Gambian literature. Recently there has been a great increase in the number of prize-winning, critically acclaimed books on their shelves, mainly due to the efforts of the Chief Librarian, Mr Mbye, who is as bookish as they come. So much so that they are running out of space on their shelves, and having to have new ones made. You can get a ticket, which lets you borrow 3 books at a time, for D60 a year (I tell my Mum it's the best D60 I spend every year, and it is, for the returns I get from it). It is also usually empty but for a few people, and so you can sit in there and read for hours on end without interruption. (Exception: during school exam periods, when it is swarming with students fighting for seats to do their swotting in).
The National Library also has a branch in Brikama, as well as a "mobile library", which travels up-country.
2) The Internet: Your mileage may vary, depending on how much Internet access you have, but the Internet is one of the best places to find reading material. For example, my reading list every week includes The New Yorker (they have an excellent fiction section), Harpers, The Guardian Book Section, Wordsbody (an African Literary blog), African Writing (a magazine of african writing), just to name a few. You can usually find stuff by doing a google search for the name of the publication you're interested in, or the name of an author (e.g. searching for "Binyavanga Wainaina", one of my favorite African writers, brings up thousands of hits). You can then either read these online, or print them out for later consumption at home.
3) Second-hand book stalls: These are scattered all over the Banjul-Serekunda area, and usually consist of little more than a guy with a mat and a wooden display on the sidewalk, selling (photocopied) versions of the current books on the high school literature curriculum, as well as a few second-hand novels and non-fiction books. My favorite is located in Banjul, near the turn-table just before Albert Market - the guy's name is Alex, and you can't miss him: he's right there on the sidewalk, opposite the park. Whenever I feel the book-hoarding urge kicking in, I head there and spend a glorious fifteen minutes perusing the books he has on sale. The list changes every time I go, and I always get something (he will go inside and get you more from his "book box" if you ask nicely). Since I started going there, I have acquired everything from Penelope Lively to Terry Pratchett, from a book on the history of warfare to an introduction to Marxist theory. All for the extremely cheap price of D25 per title (and less if you're buying more: you can usually talk him into giving you three for D60, for example). You can't beat that.
4) Your friends: There aren't any book clubs, exactly (at least, not that I know of), but there is a literary community, in the sense of "people who read good books". Ask around - you might be surprised. I have more than a hundred books in my personal collection, and would be very interested in swapping with someone. I'm sure there are others out there. Contact them, and ask politely - most bibliophiles I know are usually very open when it comes to books, and will be willing to share. Of course, what would be nice is if someone started a Gambian lit mag, or at least a book club, to rally all of us around.
If you have any other tips, add them to the comments below.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Reading the Ceiling - A Review
In the slit between my bedroom curtains I see a triangle of sky more grey than blue. [...] I plan to be loose today. But who with?
Ayodele is a young Aku girl growing up in The Gambia. The book starts when, at 18, she has to make a monumental decision: who to lose her virginity to. But it's more than just who she loses it to that is important, it's that she is losing it, rebelling against the strict moral system of her mother's generation where a woman only lost her virginity on her wedding night, to her husband. This sense of rebellion against the rigid structures binding women in place in Gambian society is something that underlies the whole book, always subtly in place, always at the base of all the choices Ayodele makes (or fails to make).
Ayodele has a short-list of possible candidates, and at the beginning of the book we find her running through them in her mind, weighing them against each other. (And the largest mango in my pile? The biggest bonga on my stall?, she asks at one point during the descriptions). It is at this point that the book splits into three, the three possible paths Ayodele's life could take, depending on which choice she makes.
Given the plot of the book, it would have been very easy for it to become nothing more than a cheap gimmick, swamped in righteous sentimentality and a bias for certain choices over others on the author's part. Not so in this case - all the choices Ayodele makes are as valid as any other: there is no preaching, no overbearing moral tone. It is told in the first person, and the storytelling is watertight, and very convincing - the author never gets in the way of her characters, or interferes with them. There is a discipline in the storytelling, and it pays off: Ayodele is ready to step out of the page at any moment, and during her moments of sorrow - and this book, like real life, does not shy away from those - you feel great sympathy for her.
We often think of the choices we make as linked together in a long line, from start to finish, one choice leading to another, which leads to another, and so on until we expire. This view is overly simplistic, and not very realistic. Our choices are more like a web, each choice linked to a hundred other choices, which are linked to a hundred others, the linkages running backward and forward and letting you arrive at different parts of the web via different paths. Dayo, rather than taking the simplistic view here, takes the more complex one: things in one choice-line are echoed in a second one, certain things are repeated in all three lines, even though different choices were made by Ayodele. You find yourself wondering whether this complex interaction between the many choices we (and others) make, are not what we glorify and call Fate (with a capital F).
I feel like I do when I stand on the wet sand on the beach [...] and try to guess which of the waves will reach my toes before their weight pulls them back. [...] It's not the obvious ones, not necessarily the big ones that ride by themselves. More often than not, these waves never touch my toes.
Dayo Forster is a great stylist of prose, and you get the feeling much work went into crafting every word on these pages. The sentences are beautiful, and there are turns of phrase which demand that you re-read them, their lyricism almost poetic in its effect. Yet Ayodele never takes herself too seriously - all through the book there is a thin film of humor lain over everything that happens, and matters are dealt with with a great subtlety, and a very, very fine hand. Take, for example, this description of... well, just read it:
[He] can drive. I direct him all the way. Will you take me home? Why don't you stop here for a bit? Shall we move to the back seat? I have the good sense to take out the condom in my disco bag.
The book is set in The Gambia, and the descriptions and dialogue are very authentic. When Ayodele and her classmates travel up-country to celebrate their graduation with a picnic, you are there with them: the mud and the mosquitoes and the river with the canoes on it. There are many layers to this book, and many excursions into subjects which intrude into the life of every Gambian, despite your best efforts to guard against them: from the large (politics, religion, polygamy) to the small (how many mburu to buy for breakfast). But everything is always viewed from the perspective of Ayodele, and how it affects her life - there are no lengthy excursions into topics which have nothing to do with the plot, but which the author thought were pertinent in a Gambian novel anyway.
All this adds up to create a really good novel, one which transports you breathless from the almost-childish musings of a teenager lying on her bed making plans for the rest of her life, to the end, when Aodele has grown - in more ways than one - and is left, not bitter, not even regretful, but settled into her life, time and experience wrapping her up in a heavy old shawl and sitting her down in an armchair to await.... whatever comes next. Ayodele is a very sad character: one of the themse of the book is how she searches for love in her life continuously, yet never truly finds it (except in one instance when she has it cruelly wrested away from her). The work hovers on the edge of being existentialist - Ayodele is not very religous at the best of times, and outright atheistic at others, yet she always seems to be searching, for herself, for others, for meaning, most of the time without even knowing what she looks for - and you are left with a sense of the futility of all the choices we make, ultimately. By the end of the book, Ayodele has done everything, and done nothing and, as we know (having caught glimpses of her other possible futures) this is the only way it could end. 'I wish I could go back and... and change things", a thousand bad movie actors have said. Maybe someone should get them a copy of this novel, so they'll stop being deluded.
Reading the Ceiling is Dayo Forster's first novel. You can get it on the publisher's website here.
Ayodele is a young Aku girl growing up in The Gambia. The book starts when, at 18, she has to make a monumental decision: who to lose her virginity to. But it's more than just who she loses it to that is important, it's that she is losing it, rebelling against the strict moral system of her mother's generation where a woman only lost her virginity on her wedding night, to her husband. This sense of rebellion against the rigid structures binding women in place in Gambian society is something that underlies the whole book, always subtly in place, always at the base of all the choices Ayodele makes (or fails to make).
Ayodele has a short-list of possible candidates, and at the beginning of the book we find her running through them in her mind, weighing them against each other. (And the largest mango in my pile? The biggest bonga on my stall?, she asks at one point during the descriptions). It is at this point that the book splits into three, the three possible paths Ayodele's life could take, depending on which choice she makes.
Given the plot of the book, it would have been very easy for it to become nothing more than a cheap gimmick, swamped in righteous sentimentality and a bias for certain choices over others on the author's part. Not so in this case - all the choices Ayodele makes are as valid as any other: there is no preaching, no overbearing moral tone. It is told in the first person, and the storytelling is watertight, and very convincing - the author never gets in the way of her characters, or interferes with them. There is a discipline in the storytelling, and it pays off: Ayodele is ready to step out of the page at any moment, and during her moments of sorrow - and this book, like real life, does not shy away from those - you feel great sympathy for her.
We often think of the choices we make as linked together in a long line, from start to finish, one choice leading to another, which leads to another, and so on until we expire. This view is overly simplistic, and not very realistic. Our choices are more like a web, each choice linked to a hundred other choices, which are linked to a hundred others, the linkages running backward and forward and letting you arrive at different parts of the web via different paths. Dayo, rather than taking the simplistic view here, takes the more complex one: things in one choice-line are echoed in a second one, certain things are repeated in all three lines, even though different choices were made by Ayodele. You find yourself wondering whether this complex interaction between the many choices we (and others) make, are not what we glorify and call Fate (with a capital F).
I feel like I do when I stand on the wet sand on the beach [...] and try to guess which of the waves will reach my toes before their weight pulls them back. [...] It's not the obvious ones, not necessarily the big ones that ride by themselves. More often than not, these waves never touch my toes.
Dayo Forster is a great stylist of prose, and you get the feeling much work went into crafting every word on these pages. The sentences are beautiful, and there are turns of phrase which demand that you re-read them, their lyricism almost poetic in its effect. Yet Ayodele never takes herself too seriously - all through the book there is a thin film of humor lain over everything that happens, and matters are dealt with with a great subtlety, and a very, very fine hand. Take, for example, this description of... well, just read it:
[He] can drive. I direct him all the way. Will you take me home? Why don't you stop here for a bit? Shall we move to the back seat? I have the good sense to take out the condom in my disco bag.
The book is set in The Gambia, and the descriptions and dialogue are very authentic. When Ayodele and her classmates travel up-country to celebrate their graduation with a picnic, you are there with them: the mud and the mosquitoes and the river with the canoes on it. There are many layers to this book, and many excursions into subjects which intrude into the life of every Gambian, despite your best efforts to guard against them: from the large (politics, religion, polygamy) to the small (how many mburu to buy for breakfast). But everything is always viewed from the perspective of Ayodele, and how it affects her life - there are no lengthy excursions into topics which have nothing to do with the plot, but which the author thought were pertinent in a Gambian novel anyway.
All this adds up to create a really good novel, one which transports you breathless from the almost-childish musings of a teenager lying on her bed making plans for the rest of her life, to the end, when Aodele has grown - in more ways than one - and is left, not bitter, not even regretful, but settled into her life, time and experience wrapping her up in a heavy old shawl and sitting her down in an armchair to await.... whatever comes next. Ayodele is a very sad character: one of the themse of the book is how she searches for love in her life continuously, yet never truly finds it (except in one instance when she has it cruelly wrested away from her). The work hovers on the edge of being existentialist - Ayodele is not very religous at the best of times, and outright atheistic at others, yet she always seems to be searching, for herself, for others, for meaning, most of the time without even knowing what she looks for - and you are left with a sense of the futility of all the choices we make, ultimately. By the end of the book, Ayodele has done everything, and done nothing and, as we know (having caught glimpses of her other possible futures) this is the only way it could end. 'I wish I could go back and... and change things", a thousand bad movie actors have said. Maybe someone should get them a copy of this novel, so they'll stop being deluded.
Reading the Ceiling is Dayo Forster's first novel. You can get it on the publisher's website here.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
"Reading the Ceiling"
I started reading "Reading the Ceiling", by Dayo Forster, yesterday. I am only in a hundred pages, but I am completely drawn into the story. The prose gets really, heartwarmingly beautiful at times, and I guess being a Gambian some things resonate with me in ways they wouldn't with someone who has never lived here all their life. I will post a review when I finish reading it, but even now I would highly recommend it, not as "Gambian literature" (as in: read this, and excuse that it may be a bad book, the prose does not flow, the plot does not make sense, because it was written by a Gambian), but just as a good book anyone could enjoy.
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