Bjorn
Reader
Yvonne Vera's tale isn't a pretty one - accomplished novelist by 30, considered one of the most promising African writers, and dead from AIDS at 40. Once you know something like that about a writer, it's difficult to separate her from the books she wrote; it looks too symbolic, too depressing.
Much like Under the Tongue, in other words. Her third novel (and the first of hers I've read) is at the same time graceful and deeply unsettling, hard-hitting and willfully opaque. This is obviously intentional; after all, this tale of three generations of Zimbabwean women living around the time of the war for independence is centered around the idea that there are some things you cannot say, some things that are too horrible, too traumatizing or too taboo to speak out loud - yet will kill you from within if you don't express them; a history of accusations of witchcraft, of grief, of violence and rape. Let your women keep silence etc. How the very things you fight for can end up crushing you - or leading to you crushing others. It tries to understand, to connect, but optimistic it ain't.
Alternating between a first-person account by the young grand-daughter Zhizha and a third-person history of her family, the novel paints a picture where the reader has to fill in a lot him/herself - especially for Zhizha's chapters, which get very poetic and symbolic; too much so, IMO. While the imagery is sometimes very striking, it also frequently gets both too impenetrable and far too repetitive. The entire novel, but especially the first-person bits, has an almost nightmarish quality - and anyone who's ever tried their hand at dream interpretation know how frustrating it can be. "Oh, another reference to rivers flowing somewhere but roots tying you down?"
I'm sure there is a good, possibly great, novel to be found in here if you're willing to do the work. A story that's both compassionate and painful, furious and forgiving. If your tastes run towards the abstractly allegorical, you might like it a lot; personally, I find myself playing connect-the-dots a little too often to appreciate the whole picture. ***00
Much like Under the Tongue, in other words. Her third novel (and the first of hers I've read) is at the same time graceful and deeply unsettling, hard-hitting and willfully opaque. This is obviously intentional; after all, this tale of three generations of Zimbabwean women living around the time of the war for independence is centered around the idea that there are some things you cannot say, some things that are too horrible, too traumatizing or too taboo to speak out loud - yet will kill you from within if you don't express them; a history of accusations of witchcraft, of grief, of violence and rape. Let your women keep silence etc. How the very things you fight for can end up crushing you - or leading to you crushing others. It tries to understand, to connect, but optimistic it ain't.
Alternating between a first-person account by the young grand-daughter Zhizha and a third-person history of her family, the novel paints a picture where the reader has to fill in a lot him/herself - especially for Zhizha's chapters, which get very poetic and symbolic; too much so, IMO. While the imagery is sometimes very striking, it also frequently gets both too impenetrable and far too repetitive. The entire novel, but especially the first-person bits, has an almost nightmarish quality - and anyone who's ever tried their hand at dream interpretation know how frustrating it can be. "Oh, another reference to rivers flowing somewhere but roots tying you down?"
I'm sure there is a good, possibly great, novel to be found in here if you're willing to do the work. A story that's both compassionate and painful, furious and forgiving. If your tastes run towards the abstractly allegorical, you might like it a lot; personally, I find myself playing connect-the-dots a little too often to appreciate the whole picture. ***00
