Jessica
This is definitely my favourite book that I've read so far this year - and I know that it being February means that there's plenty of time for that to change, but the point is, I thought that this book was amazing.
The problem with loving a book so much is that I don't have much to put in a review of it. The one thing I didn't get was why parts two and three are in the order they are. That is, chronologically part three comes before part two (the rest of the parts being in order) and I just don't know what the purpose of that was? All it meant was that I spent part two mildly frustrated at this mystery being built up surrounding the circumstances of Baby's birth, and by the time I was reading part three I already knew how everything was going to turn out - that Olanna would forgive Odenigbo and Kainene would forgive Richard, because I'd just read about them being perfectly happy in part two. And also, that the baby would end up being raised by Olanna and Odenigbo, because that's what was happening in part two, after all.
But it didn't bother me that much - the novel works the way it is, I just think it also would have worked without the middle two parts being swapped, and I don't understand what swapping them really achieved.
Anyway. The novel as a whole has a sense of the inevitable about it, so maybe that's another reason why it didn't bother me. After all, it's a historical novel, and honestly I had never heard of Biafra before reading this book, so I was pretty sure they were going to lose their war of independence. But within that, there was still suspense. Bad things would happen, but what bad things? Characters were dying left right and centre, with only the five characters at the novel's core seeming immune - so I guessed that at the end something bad, like death, would befall one of them and that would be the climax... but that didn't really happen. There was the fake-out where Ugwu seemed to have died, but then he came back and recovered, and of course there was Kainene's mysterious disappearance that DEVASTATED ME FOREVER because she was the most engaging character to me, but her disappearance didn't seem much of a "climax" to the book, even though it happened at the end. In the end, the way the book ends seems to mirror the end of the war it's set in; it's exhausted and devastated, and there's nothing left to go wrong because there's nothing left.
I skim-read some reviews here on Goodreads and there were some complaints about the characters - that they were unrealistic, too perfect, or unengaging. I found none of these to be the case. To the contrary, they were all very imperfect but you could see how their backgrounds and social positions made them what they were. In particular, one of the reviews I skimmed complained that Richard was so anti-racist it was painful, but I still thought he was anti-racist in a very “privileged white person” way. He gets excited about Biafra's declaration of independence because he thinks this means he can be a native Biafran, and he spends half the book irritated that this or that person considers him an outsider, when can't they hear he speaks Igbo?! (Even though at some point late in the book he admits that "idioms and dialects elude him" - which would seem to mean a lot of spoken Igbo...) The point is that he, just like every other character, has flaws.
Another of the criticisms I read is that this book is hard to understand if you don't know anything about Nigerian history; well honestly, I knew practically nothing, and got completely absorbed in this book all the same. So while it may have been the experience of that person, I really don't think people should avoid the book, or postpone reading it in favour of another one, for that reason.
In fact, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction. The characters are very real and engaging, I found the storyline compelling, the book never seemed to drag in spite of its length. There's a lot of sex scenes, if that influences your decision. Just read it because I loved it, and I'm sure that people aside from me would love it, too.
This is definitely my favourite book that I've read so far this year - and I know that it being February means that there's plenty of time for that to change, but the point is, I thought that this book was amazing.
The problem with loving a book so much is that I don't have much to put in a review of it. The one thing I didn't get was why parts two and three are in the order they are. That is, chronologically part three comes before part two (the rest of the parts being in order) and I just don't know what the purpose of that was? All it meant was that I spent part two mildly frustrated at this mystery being built up surrounding the circumstances of Baby's birth, and by the time I was reading part three I already knew how everything was going to turn out - that Olanna would forgive Odenigbo and Kainene would forgive Richard, because I'd just read about them being perfectly happy in part two. And also, that the baby would end up being raised by Olanna and Odenigbo, because that's what was happening in part two, after all.
But it didn't bother me that much - the novel works the way it is, I just think it also would have worked without the middle two parts being swapped, and I don't understand what swapping them really achieved.
Anyway. The novel as a whole has a sense of the inevitable about it, so maybe that's another reason why it didn't bother me. After all, it's a historical novel, and honestly I had never heard of Biafra before reading this book, so I was pretty sure they were going to lose their war of independence. But within that, there was still suspense. Bad things would happen, but what bad things? Characters were dying left right and centre, with only the five characters at the novel's core seeming immune - so I guessed that at the end something bad, like death, would befall one of them and that would be the climax... but that didn't really happen. There was the fake-out where Ugwu seemed to have died, but then he came back and recovered, and of course there was Kainene's mysterious disappearance that DEVASTATED ME FOREVER because she was the most engaging character to me, but her disappearance didn't seem much of a "climax" to the book, even though it happened at the end. In the end, the way the book ends seems to mirror the end of the war it's set in; it's exhausted and devastated, and there's nothing left to go wrong because there's nothing left.
I skim-read some reviews here on Goodreads and there were some complaints about the characters - that they were unrealistic, too perfect, or unengaging. I found none of these to be the case. To the contrary, they were all very imperfect but you could see how their backgrounds and social positions made them what they were. In particular, one of the reviews I skimmed complained that Richard was so anti-racist it was painful, but I still thought he was anti-racist in a very “privileged white person” way. He gets excited about Biafra's declaration of independence because he thinks this means he can be a native Biafran, and he spends half the book irritated that this or that person considers him an outsider, when can't they hear he speaks Igbo?! (Even though at some point late in the book he admits that "idioms and dialects elude him" - which would seem to mean a lot of spoken Igbo...) The point is that he, just like every other character, has flaws.
Another of the criticisms I read is that this book is hard to understand if you don't know anything about Nigerian history; well honestly, I knew practically nothing, and got completely absorbed in this book all the same. So while it may have been the experience of that person, I really don't think people should avoid the book, or postpone reading it in favour of another one, for that reason.
In fact, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction. The characters are very real and engaging, I found the storyline compelling, the book never seemed to drag in spite of its length. There's a lot of sex scenes, if that influences your decision. Just read it because I loved it, and I'm sure that people aside from me would love it, too.