You’ll leave this book fulfilled in knowledge of its main subject, yet still yearning to know more.
Time and space are willfully shifted around in this historical fiction inspired by the life of a Nigerian-born man who, after having been enslaved, became a clergyman, linguist, and abolitionist in the 19th century.
Samuel Àjàyí Crowther (ca. 1809-1891) set an astonishingly triumphant example for his fellow West Africans in his rich, accomplished lifetime. After he was freed from Portuguese slavers by Britain’s Royal Navy and left in Sierra Leone, he added the first and last names to the one he’d had from birth, studied languages, and was eventually ordained an Anglican minister. He translated the Bible and other church texts into Yoruba, became the first African bishop of the Anglican Church, and campaigned against the slave trade throughout his life. This posthumously published novel by Bándélé (1967-2022), who was also a celebrated playwright and filmmaker in his native Nigeria, presents an impressionistic, mostly nonlinear narrative of this extraordinary life, beginning with Àjàyí’s childhood in his hometown of Óṣogún just before it is laid siege by the “Malian swordmen” who sold its thousands of residents into slavery. He tells his mother of a premonition he had of a god of “health and well-being” looking malarial, a sign of troubles ahead. Bándélé imposes his own imaginative resources on this and subsequent events of Crowther’s life. Only occasionally do Bándélé’s imaginative projections lead him to an anachronism—“We have heard of white men who turned the ocean into a highway,” Ájàyí’s mother tells him early on—but not often enough to obstruct the novel’s rich stew of historical perspective, storytelling brio, and humane insight. He shows as much acumen in staging conversations between the older, much-traveled Crowther and the people of his erstwhile homeland as he does in rendering a real-life meeting Crowther had with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, whom he holds spellbound when he recites the Lord’s Prayer in Yoruba. The novel’s collagelike approach to Crowther’s story not only gives a rich sense of the dimensions of his achievement, but also offers a keener, broader perspective as to the nature of African slavery and those who were complicit in its execution, making Bándélé as effective a historian as he was a dramatist.
You’ll leave this book fulfilled in knowledge of its main subject, yet still yearning to know more.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780063417083
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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