ghostvillehero

Synopsis:

Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They’re completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating.

As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.

Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.

Review:
2003 was a year overpowered by huge book releases, particularly the fifth Harry Potter book and The DaVinci Code. In the midst of all of this, Purple Hibiscus is released, flies pretty much under the radar, but becomes the start of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s important and spellbinding career. Her subsequent books have made her influential and well-regarded, but this debut should not be overlooked when discussing her canon. Sure Half of the Yellow Sun and Americanah are more recognized (the latter being developed for an HBO series releasing later this year), but her debut is still important, still relevant, still an amazing work that should be read.

The novel centers around 15 year old Kambili and her trying to navigate the world that is rapidly changing. Besides the Nigerian government being in turmoil, her brother is at odds with her father and her father causes tension in the entire house. Her life and the lives around her continue to fall apart as the story moves on, and there are times when Kambili is trying to understand a world that is almost too grown up for her to understand. There are many times when she is part of conversations that she does not exactly comprehend, and the solutions that she comes up with are not as simple as she thinks. Many of those characters that influence her life on a daily basis are not good for her, but she is not old enough to leave them behind. The biggest villain in all of this is her father.

Eugene Achike is one of the scariest villains I have ever read. He owns factories, runs a political newspaper, is a devout Catholic, gives freely to charity, orphanages, and the church, and he is also the catalyst to the violence, rage, and abuse in the house. There is not a single scene where I cannot feel the fear, the fear that one of his children will say something or do something that he does not agree with, and the wait from the public space to the private home is excruciating. I can feel the tension when Kambili or her brother Jaja offends him in one way or another, to the point where I am as afraid of his wrath as his children and his wife. The juxtapose of his public image versus his private actions is incredible, and he is a character that most likely could not be written by most writers. If someone is to ask me what makes Ms. Adichie such a talented author or even how to write a great villain, I would use Papa as my first example.
There are so many early works by so many different authors I need to read, and I have had Purple Hibiscus for a long time. Even though I finished this novel close to 17 years after it’s first release, this is a story that is timeless, that it has aged gracefully. It is an important piece of literature that will always be worth the time.

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Synopsis:

Married twenty years to Thomas and living in Nashville with their two children, Maggie is drawn ineluctably into a passionate affair while still fiercely committed to her husband and family. What begins as a platonic intellectual and spiritual exchange between writer Maggie and poet James, gradually transforms into an emotional and erotically charged bond that challenges Maggie’s sense of loyalty and morality, drawing her deeper into the darkness of desire.

Review:

There are some moments toward the end of this short novel that makes the reader pause and think about the way the world is structured, the way relationships and marriage works, and how everything has a purpose. The novel focuses on Maggie, a devoted Christian woman who has had a long marriage, two kids, and now finds herself emailing and talking to James, a poet whom she initially writes to because she admires his work. The relationship gets convoluted, and they end up meeting. The plot of the story is nothing that has not been heard or read before, and the structure, in form of emails, flashbacks, and stream of conscious type explorations, is nothing new either. What makes Fire Sermon really stick out is the writing, the insights and philosophy, and the sheer beauty of some of the thoughts and insights. 

Two thoughts have really stuck out in my mind since reading this, both of them pertain to Maggie and how she views God within this situation. She has met with James, she has stayed with Thomas, and she is wrestling with whether or not to confess her indiscretions. She thinks there has to be the reason for her attraction for a man outside of her marriage, and this could be God’s purpose for marriage as a whole: to narrow your focus so that you can appreciate and enjoy the things outside of this focus a little more. This idea is one of those I am not sure I grasp completely, but it has left a lasting impression on me, and I am continuing to think about it days later. 

The second comes from one of the last paragraphs in the novel.

God. Who neither slumbers nor sleeps, who looks not as man looks, who sees the guiltiest swervings of the weaving heart: You never loved me as you did last night. As you do now.  (p. 201)

This alludes to the night that Maggie and James spend together, and there are two things that really stick out about this passage. One is that she feels as if God, even though He sees the imperfection of the situation, gives her one of the best nights of her life, even though it is a horrible sin. Infidelity is the only excusable reason for divorce in the Bible, and even though this is exactly what Maggie and James do, Maggie feels like God understands and gave her exactly what she needs. The second thought is that God does love her more in a certain instance than as a whole, that she feels as if this entire situation was given to her out of God’s love, and she is grateful. 
I am not a religious person, and I do not really have opinions on whether this is right or wrong, but I do find it to be an interesting idea. I do feel as if the religious aspect of this novel could be a turnoff to some, but I also feel like Maggie’s Christianity is not the religion of the Evangelicals. Hers is more of a personal relationship, based in the sermons and philosophies of the old thinkers and not of the Megachurch set. This makes the themes of God and relationships with God much more tolerable. Add this to Quatro’s beautiful sentences and passages, and Fire Sermon is an incredible experience.

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IndieBound

Synopsis:

Following The Nakano Thrift Shop, Hiromi Kawakami’s breakout success, comes a new novel full of charm, subtlety, and style by an author whose readership in Japan numbers in the millions.

Each woman in this book has succumbed, even if only for an hour, to that seductive, imprudent, and furtively feline man who managed to glide so naturally into their lives. But who really was Mr. Nishino?

Still clinging to the vivid memory of his warm breath, his indecipherable silences, and his nonchalance, ten women who have loved him tell their stories as they attempt to recreate the image of the unfathomable and seemingly unattainable Mr. Nishino. Through accounts that are full of humor, intelligence, and the bittersweet joys of love, these women evoke Nishino’s image but reveal themselves. Each perspective is both captivating and sensual, droll but important, and each is a variation on themes of love and identity. 

Review:

While I was reading through this novel, which is sort of an interconnection of stories told by the lovers of Yukihiko Nishino, some of them only meeting him for an hour, others having a relationship with him, all of them telling their perceptions of the things that he gave them. The stories are almost chronological, and as I was reading, I started to wonder what it was about Nishino that draws him into being a compelling character. He does not have more lovers than the average adult Japanese male, and even though he has these relationships, work still takes up most of him time (in most cases). So it comes down the facts that Nishino is a mystery to the reader just like he is a mystery to the women.

Nishino goes through his life, meeting and sleeping with women, and even though he gets older, his modus operandi does not change; he feels like he cannot love women, and then when they are about the end things, he proposes marriage to several of them. There are few variations on the theme, and this might be his true self coming through, that when he is with someone he does not want to commit, until it is almost over, but the truth is deeper than that, that there is not a fear loneliness or loss that makes him cling onto these lovers. The fact is once the marriage proposals are turned down or seen as bluffs, he leaves and they never see him again. It is as if Nishino does not tell anyone the truth, but tells the same lie. 

The chapters and stories are not too long, and the translation makes this feel conversational and casual, which also makes for an easier read. I had not read Hiromi Kawakami’s previous work, but this is a very good introduction and testament to her work. I look forward to reading more. 

I received this as an ARC from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

Told with gripping intensity, It Would be Night in Caracas chronicles one woman’s desperate battle to survive amid the dangerous, sometimes deadly, turbulence of modern Venezuela and the lengths she must go to secure her future.

In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcon stands over an open grave. Alone, except for harried undertakers, she buries her mother–the only family Adelaida has ever known.

Numb with grief, Adelaida returns to the apartment they shared. Outside the window that she tapes shut every night—to prevent the tear gas raining down on protesters in the streets from seeping in. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida resists and is beaten up. It is the beginning of a fight for survival in a country that has disintegrated into violence and anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. But as fate would have it, Adelaida is given a gruesome choice that could secure her escape.

Filled with riveting twists and turns, and told in a powerful, urgent voice, It Would Be Night in Caracas is a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can crumble.

Review:

It Would Be Night in Caracas starts with a simple plot: a single woman is burying her mother. She goes back to the apartment that they shared and starts to deal with the process of grief. The problem is that she lives in Caracas, Venezuela, and it is quickly apparent that every day there is one filled with danger. From vigilante groups ran by the government, vigilante groups fighting against the government groups, money that is not worth the paper it is printed on, food shortages, and a thriving black market, the world that Karina Sainz Borgo describes is one that I cannot even wrap my head around. Some people might be put off by the description of how the main character, Adelaida Falcón, gets supplies for her period, or how she hears gunshots all through the night and learns that more of her neighborhood acquaintances have either disappears or been killed throughout the night, but I see this as a reality I do not understand. I see this as a novel of a person who is trying to go about her business in a turbulent climate, hiding out in her apartment, trying to stay quiet while listening to the noise on the outside, until the noise comes to find her. This novel tries to juxtapose the difference between the relative safety of Adelaida feels in the apartment and the chaos outside until the two meet and she has to make decisions that will affect her life but be instrumental to her survival. The tension of the novel picks up in the second half, and I really do feel the nerves that she is feeling. The tightness of the writing makes the urgency feel stronger, and the ending, though it seems as if she does not know how to end the novel for a few pages, does end satisfying.

I enjoyed this novel. It feels tense and dangerous.  I thought the end kind of dragged a little bit, but this is the only complaint I can find. It Would Be Night in Caracas is otherwise one of the best books I’ve read this year.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.