Tag: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Six Degrees of Separation: from Life of M to Raising Hare

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate:  Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s Starter -for-Six is Rachel Cusk‘s Life of M. I haven’t read it, it’s not on the TBR, but apparently an unnamed writer proposes writing the autobiography of M, a globally famous film star who has lived in the public eye since childhood. M casually tells her to ‘just make it up’. And that, apparently, is exactly what happens.

I bet I’m not alone in making my first link RF Kuang‘s Yellowface. Here’s a book I raced through: a book which dissects the publishing world. Or that part of the world ruled by social media in any case: books likely to seize the popular imagination with a theme that chimes in with the current zeitgeist. Our heroine, June, is a young and rather unsuccessful young author, who has a sort-of friendship with another young, but wildly successful author. Who dies unexpectedly. Our heroine seizes a chance, purloins the manuscript of the deceased: spends time researching and re-working it, and then presents it as her own. It has a Chinese WWI theme, and when it’s accepted for publication, her publishers find ways of Chinese-ifying her name (Juniper Song).  Sales become stratospherically huge. Throughout, the ground keeps shifting. Juniper’s self justification for her plagiarism is often convincing, as is the sheer nastiness of some of the social media battles she faces. It’s a melodrama. It’s a thriller. It’s a window on racial diversity as seen through the eyes of a social media and publishing world totally lacking in nuance. It’s a comic novel. It’s clever, leaving you with lots to think about as you flip-flop from ‘getting’ Juniper’s take on her theft , and finding her morally indefensible. It’s entertaining too. Shall I read more by Kuang? Much as I raced through this book, eager to find how the story ends – probably not. I was exhausted.

From a yellow face to a yellow sun: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A richly evocative book telling the story of the creation, rise and fall of Biafra, through the eyes of three separate yet connected groups of people. There’s Ugwu, from a traditional village, houseboy to Odenigbo, an Igbo academic. There are Olanna, Odenigbo’s partner and her twin sister Kainene, and her English partner Richard. Their structured lives fall apart as Nigeria itself does, as Biafra emerges as a nation and civil war threatens to destroy them. I’m ashamed at how little I knew of this conflict, remembering it only because of the famine caused by war. Now, an interplay of characters dealing with loyalties, often conflicting, moral responsibility, colonialism and its aftermath brings this piece of history vividly to life, the more so because the author’s family lived through this devastating time. A marvellous and involving read.

Let’s stay in Nigeria and read My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. What did I think of this book? Well, it was a quick read, an easy read, and at no point did I think of not finishing reading this story. But – and perhaps I’m not entering into the spirit of things here – a story in which the writer’s sister gets into a routine of killing her boyfriends, while the writer colludes with her deception just left me cold. The short sharp chapters, and the action which jumped hither and thither kept my interest, as did the back story of a controlling, brutal father. But in the end, it was a slightly distasteful read as far as I was concerned.

My next book is a story in which a murder of an – allegedly – loved one does not actually take place. Amy Dunne disappears on her 5th wedding anniversary, then fakes her own murder to implicate her husband Nick. She eventually returns home and … things can obviously only get worse. This is Gillian Flynn‘s Gone Girl. I’m actually not sure why I decided to read this book. After all, I’d seen, and been thoroughly disturbed by the film. Why put myself through it twice? Perhaps because I’d been assured that both book and film (Flynn wrote the screenplay) were equally well done. Early on I wondered whether I was right to bother. But then, those details which no film can really get to grips with – tiny vignettes, and thoughts from the innermost workings of those two messed-up heads – started to enrich the narrative. How could I go on willing the ending to be different when I knew perfectly well what it would be? A creepy read, with a thoroughly disturbing ending.

Another, and very different book which prompted a film, which I was disappointed to miss when it was doing the rounds: H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald. Back in the day, I had resisted reading the book simply because it had become, according to the critics, a ‘must-read’. But …read it. It’s part nature writing – sumptuous, evocative, richly descriptive, each word carefully chosen: part autobiography of a woman overturned by grief at the death of her father; part biography of TH White, author of Sword in the Stone and The Goshawk, and so much more; part manual on learning to fly a goshawk – I now now for sure this is something way beyond my capabilities and my patience. This is a splendid book for the richness of its prose, and the chance it offers to see two wholly unknown worlds: that of the falconer, and that of TH White.

And finally, another book in which a woman becomes intimately involved in te life of a wild creature – Chloe Dalton‘s Raising Hare. Confined to her country retreat during lockdown, Dalton, a high-powered political adviser finds a small, apparently abandoned leveret.This is her story. Of how she treads a difficult path of wishing to help it survive to adulthood, while respecting its wildness. While it is her house-guest, she never treats the creature as her pet, or even names it. Against the odds, it survives to maturity, and continues to include her house, inside and out, as its territory.But the creature has a profound effect on Dalton. She is sensitive and observant, and describes beautifully its changing appearance as it matures through the seasons; their ‘language’ together. Just as the hare is not quite living a normal life, she too is changed. She re-evaluates her career. It’s still important, but no longer so all-consuming. The hare makes her infinitely more connected to and aware of the natural world where her home is situated. This book strives to restore a sense of the sacred and to meet an animal on its own terms.

Well, the chain links book-to-book I hope, but is there an over-arching theme? Not a chance. Let’s see what next month brings. Kate suggests we start things off with a novella of our choice, to celebrate the popular Novellas in November, hosted by Becky of Bookish Beck and Cathy of 746 Books.


Six Degrees of Separation: From Hydra to Purple Hibiscus

Goodness!  I completely forgot that today is Six Degrees of Separation day.  I’ll have to play catch-up.

This month’s chain-starter isn’t yet published in the UK, so I haven’t read it: Hydra by Adriane Howell. 

I gather something bad has happened to the heroine as the book begins, so I’ll start with Dolores by Laureen Aimee Curtis. Dolores is a somewhat enigmatic character who fetches up at the gate of a convent – pregnant. The nuns take the young woman in, and she adjusts to their life while her mind slips back to the years before: to the assignations in love motels, sometimes to life back at home, to a boy called Angelo. Life happens to her, almost without her input. The nuns hadn’t known she was already pregnant when she came to their door. She gives birth, and they name her son. What will happen to this confused young woman? We don’t find out. Perhaps this convent, full of mainly elderly and unworldly women will remain her home. Or not. Dolores’ life has been pretty grim so far and seems likely to remain so. Somehow, we as readers remain detached from her, as the author herself does. A strange, visceral book which kept me thinking beyond the time I turned the last page.

Let’s stay with – well, not nuns – but those who have chosen the religious life:  Victoria Mackenzie’s For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain. Two female mediaeval mystics, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe tell their stories in alternating short chapters. Julian is the better known figure, for her Revelations of Divine Love, written when she was an anchoress, enclosed in a tiny windowed cell abutting a Norwich church. Both she and the other figure in the book, Marjorie Kent, had visions. Whereas Julian chooses to see little, but see it intensely, Marjorie is very different. Illiterate and rambunctious, with little time for her husband and children, she loudly proclaims her visions of Christ to anyone who will listen, and indeed those who do not wish to listen. Both took risks. To go against current Christian orthodoxy, especially as a woman, risked excommunication and a painful death. In the book, and we cannot know if this happened, the two meet, and this unlikely pair make a genuine connection. Beautifully written, and quickly read, this is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

So to another woman, isolated from her professional peers simply by virtue of being a woman:  Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. While Elizabeth Zott, hero of this book, was fighting her battles for acceptance as an academic and chemist in the ’60s, I was a schoolgirl at an all-girls’ grammar school where achievement was expected, and the norm. All the same, our academic prowess when, post graduation, we entered the world of work was not always remunerated as favourably as that of our male colleagues. So this story of a woman who was disregarded while her research was nicked by her male colleagues was bound to interest me, as was her determination not to patronise her female audience when she was hired to do a TV cookery show. But … the characterisation was thin (EZ herself), or frankly unbelievable (her small daughter), and the males disappointingly stereotypical – especially the villains of the piece. As a page-turner it wasn’t wholly successful for me.I’m out of step.  Most readers seem to love it.

I’ve just finished Go as a River by Shelley Read (Whom I’ve met!  She came to an event organised this week by our local independent bookshop and spoke engagingly and with warm enthusiasm). Victoria lives in a small inward-looking town in Colorado – one that will have been covered by a new reservoir by the end of the book. Hers is a family of men, the women in her life having died in tragic circumstances when she was only 12. They’re either hardworking and grim (father), brutal (brother) or bitter and disabled (uncle). She is their housekeeper. One day, she meets an itinerant young man, a Native American, despised and reviled by the local community: racism is rampant . Falling in love with him changes the trajectory of her life, and is the story which makes up this book. In this account, we have the wild and rugged forest landscape which surrounds her town vividly brought to life, as well as the emotional life of Read’s characters. This is an immersive tale of love, loss and resilience. As a debut novel, it’s a triumph.

Victoria is only 17 when her story begins. Ana, in Dominicana by Angie Cruz, is 15 and living in the Dominican Republic with her family. Since the age of 11 she has been promised in marriage to a man more than twice her age. Love doesn’t come into it. This wheeler dealer, a Dominican now based in New York is her family’s best chance of emigrating there with Ana as the sponsor. New York as Ana finds it is not a city paved in gold, but a shabby flat in which she is more or less a prisoner with a sometimes violent and unpredictable husband. This is her story of her feisty struggles to make a life for herself, and gain some independence, while maintaining contact with her family in troubled political times ( the late 1960s). A good read, up-beat and engaging even when times are very hard, and a real insight into the struggles and compromises of being an immigrant with responsibilities to those who have been left behind.

Lastly, another 15 year old, whom we meet in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. Kambili is a Nigerian teenager who lives a privileged life with her brother Jaja and her parents. Her father is a successful businessman who is proud of the way he is able to support his community with his generosity. His devotion to his Catholic religion is however fanatical and more than a little warped, his expectations of his children controlling and cruel. Their home life is set against the turbulent politics of the time, and the contrast with their father’s sister’s family. They are in much more straitened circumstances, but surround each other with easy-going love. It’s the play between these two sets of attitudes that brings this story into being, and allows Kambili gradually to find her voice. A compelling and often uncomfortable page-turner.

Each of these books is linked by having as their protagonists women, isolated either by choice or circumstance.  Perhaps they could have done with reading next month’s starter book: Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, by Elizabeth Day.