PRINCE OF MONKEYS

Name: PRINCE OF MONKEYS
Author: Nnamdi Ehirim
ISBN: 978-1-64009-167-2

by Nnamdi Ehirim ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019

Told in beautifully evocative prose, a panoramic novel showing that the price of growing beyond one’s origins might be...

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Nigerian writer Ehirim's audacious debut novel follows a teenager's quest for self-definition in a country in search of itself.

In a prologue set in 1992, the narrator, Ihechi, and his friends run into the famed Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti, who proceeds to get the foursome—which includes Mendaus, a pretentious bookworm; his stepsister, Zeenat, who doubles as Ihechi’s love interest; and a young Christian known only as Pastor’s son—drunk to the point of threatening a police officer. Ehirim then moves back to 1985 as he retraces the steps leading up to that fateful event, which encapsulates the generational and class intersections propelling the novel. Most of the adults here are fixed in their worldviews. Their children, too young to understand the circumstances that have led their parents to be so rigid, socialize with one another though they come from different backgrounds and differentiate themselves through pop culture. Zeenat communicates through movies, Pastor’s son through Scripture, and Mendaus through books. Ihechi, however, is constantly seeking meaning and remains distant due to his banker father’s business relationship with the government and his mother’s religious fanaticism. These poles gesture toward what Ihechi sees as the underpinnings of Nigerian society: corruption and traditionalism. Fela, a musician who encouraged traditional African lifestyles and religions while being arrested hundreds of times for criticizing the Nigerian government, develops into the perfect centerpiece to represent both the cross-cultural appeal of music and Ihechi’s emotional confusion as a child. The next time the foursome sees Fela, a military crackdown leaves Zeenat dead; Mendaus radicalized; and Ihechi’s mother fearful for her son’s impressionable spirit. She sends him away to live with his uncle and cousins, Pentecostals who look down on him—though it turns out that Ihechi’s cousin Tessy is sneaking out at night to work in a brothel. Through her connections, Ihechi winds up working for a major general in Nigeria’s army, setting the stage for a confrontation with his childhood friends that forces him to reckon with what both he and his country have become.

Told in beautifully evocative prose, a panoramic novel showing that the price of growing beyond one’s origins might be steeper than anticipated.

Pub Date: April 2, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-64009-167-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Counterpoint

Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.