Prayer was all the recommendation he heard for Nigeria these days. For every crisis, eyes were shut, knees engaged, heads pointed to Mecca and backs tPrayer was all the recommendation he heard for Nigeria these days. For every crisis, eyes were shut, knees engaged, heads pointed to Mecca and backs turned to the matter at hand.
Chibundu Onuzo’s sophomore novel, Welcome to Lagos, is a novel deeply embedded in the heart and soul of Lagos, Nigeria. This is book is not meant to be a tourist's guide to the city. It is neither positive propaganda nor demonstratively negative toward the culture or the state; it is simply a snapshot in Nigerian truth. Matter of fact but witty, emotional but not melodramatic. It is a balance that any reader can enjoy. The prose drips with the Lagosian culture and the atmosphere around the characters within these pages is busy with a sense of urgency and the fervency of life that is often overlooked in comforts of first-world life. Skillfully weaving multiple storylines together, Lagos laces together a tale where the powerful meet the poor head on, where Robin Hood-like morals still exist and where the cultures of London and Lagos blend and clash as colorfully as the gorgeous cover art that wraps this. I opened these pages not knowing what to expect as someone unfamiliar with the culture but, as I’d hoped, this novel took me by the hand and showed me the way, navigating me through the gates of wealth and under the bridges of poverty with both grace and heart.
Welcome to Lagos features a cast of unlikely companions who are bound together by circumstance but wield their circumstances into the bonds of a true family. When Chike and Yemi desert the Nigerian army—a capital offense—they know that they must escape down roads less traveled until they can get as far away from the Niger Delta as possible. Along the way, they meet Fineboy, a mischievous youngster with a carefully crafted American accent who dreams of becoming a radio presenter and whose scrappy street smarts they come to depend on; Isoken, a beautiful adolescent separated from her family in the fighting who’s still traumatized and guarded from an attempted rape she suspects Fineboy of being a part of; and Oma who is fleeing from the damaging fists of her abusive husband who knows the next time he hits her could kill her. This unlikely band of characters just trying to survive finds themselves brushing up against the law in more ways than one and changing the course of history when an unlikely intruder to their home comes a-knocking.
This novel is so full of the soul and ethos of Nigeria. The dialogue drips with authenticity right down to the colorful pidgin dialogue that Onuzo skillfully weaves in, authentically portraying a culture while navigating readers who are unfamiliar with such dialogue. There are several references and language switches you may not immediately grasp unless you intimately understand this world yourself, but that makes it all the more realistic and immersive in setting. The best literature isn’t watered down for the masses. Sometimes, we have to go it.
Short chapters made for a quick and jaunty pace. There’s very little, if any, fat to be trimmed on this story—just enough to create a trim and attractive figure, not bloated with unnecessary prose that should have been shaved away instead of sitting like a pot belly at the center of the narrative. Welcome to Lagos links the narratives of each character together, even introducing new characters with their own POV chapters late in the novel. It creates the effect of effortlessly swinging from vine to vine, each one a new chapter with voices that overlap then recede into the distance, reappear then recede again as another voice takes over. There’s something in this novel for everyone, whether you are familiar with the culture or not. This is a novel that addresses real issues head on while avoiding soapboxing and proselytizing. Rape, domestic abuse, war, corruption, poverty, class relations, family, and duty all play major parts in this narrative production in a way that is as poetic as it is gritty.
“Say it out loud so it doesn’t have power over you again. My husband used to beat me. I only married him because I was afraid of being a spinster for the rest of my life. Say it.” “I was attacked by some men. They tried to rape me. I can’t forget. I’ve tried everything but I can’t forget. Semen everywhere. On my face. On my stomach. In my ears. I can still feel it.”
The sense of place and scenery here is alive. You can feel the dust in the air and the boli on your tongue. Welcome to Lagos offers up beautiful prose and thoughtful innuendos while never shying away from real matters, hard glimpses in the mirror for both the characters and their country.
“In your country, the descendants of the biggest thieves, are they not the ones making the decisions? Your House of Lords. Who made them so? Was it not by oppressing the poor, by swallowing all the land? Today, we are calling them ‘my Lord,’ calling them ‘Honorable.’ Your banks built on the slave trade, Lloyds, have they returned any compensation?”
The characters here are vivid with voices that raise loudly above the noise of the city, their storylines woven together with care and utter believability. Many of the chapters are marked with newspaper excerpts, both tying together the storylines and highlighting the state of Nigeria, functioning as a back drop for the novel’s unfolding. That was a clever choice. It allowed Onuzo to fill in the circumstances of Lagos, the state of the country and its people, without having to pound it home ad nauseum in the narrative, allowing room for social commentary at its finest—biting and poetic. And for that Welcome to Lagos earned 4 stars and a high recommendation from me that you add it to your shelves! ****
**Thank you so much to the publicity department at Catapult/Counterpoint Press for reaching out to me and sending me copies of this lovely book!**
P.S. If you've never been to a Chibundu Onuzo signing, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you go to one. She's hilarious and engaging, down to earth and extremely, extremely intelligent and thoughtful when she speaks. Check out my interview with her on my Instagram, and it will soon be added to my blog as well!...more
See my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author, Sam Graham-Felsen here!
I will be surrounded by dudes like this for the rest of my life. White boys andSee my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author, Sam Graham-Felsen here!
I will be surrounded by dudes like this for the rest of my life. White boys and white girls who grew up behind whitewashed fences, who grew up with no idea, for the rest of my life. The force preordained it: Not only will I be surrounded by them, I will become one of them, the thing I hate and can’t escape. Not a white boy or a whitey or a white b*tch, but a white person.
If you’re looking for a way to start your new year out right, Green is absolutely the way to go. Prepare yourself to be transported by a distinctive voice and a story line that screams with authenticity. More than authentic—it was one that mirrored what middle school was like for me in the 90s: the same cliques, the same typecasts, the same social rules. This novel transported me back to those days, back to those vibrations in the air, to that slang on our tongues, to those priorities in our pre-teen minds and to those questions that plagued our thoughts night and day about the world around us and our place in it.
Picture it (in my Estelle Getty voice): Boston, 1992.
David Greenfeld is one of the only white sixth graders at Martin Luther King Middle School—the “ghetto” school—with no friends, no cool points, and no chance at getting a girl. His Harvard-educated, politically correct, granola parents don’t understand his pleas to be removed from the school, and there seems to be no end to the social torture in sight. Until. He meets Marlon Wellings, an ultra-smart, Boston Celtics-obsessed, black kid from the projects across the street whose street smarts start to rub off on Dave and who’s life in the hood and drive to get out of it spark questions in Dave’s mind he’s never contemplated before.
In Green, Sam Graham-Felsen gives us a fresh look at the merging of two cultures, literally painting it is a physical intersection of neighborhoods as well as of cultural mores and rules. I couldn’t help but remember another book I’ve reviewed recently that was also a coming-of-age story with a jumping off point from the ’92 L.A. riots—and all the while, I marveled at how much better this story was told, at how much more the voice and experiences rang true. Graham-Felsen brought these characters to life on the page. He gave them hopes and made them my hopes. He made them fall, and I felt the blow myself. And he made them fail, as we all do in life sometimes. It is in those moments that this novel’s heart is most evident and that its impact slammed into me the hardest.
Through Dave and Marlon, Graham-Felsen explores the color line through the eyes of adolescents still finding themselves amidst the chaos of race relations. What really set this novel apart for me is that he gave us the perspective of the white side of the fence, while still being true to both stories, to both cultures.
In school the next day, Ms. Ansley shows us another installment of this long, made-for-TV movie we’ve been watching called Roots. When she introduced it, she said we needed to know our history, especially after what happened in L.A…I hear people shifting in their chairs. The violence is one thing: We all know the wounds are just makeup, the whip’s just a prop, the loud crack’s only a sound effect. But the n-word is different. Even if it’s just acting, it’s still the real n-word. I’ve heard it ten thousand times…but always with the soft ending. Hearing it with the hard er …makes my face muscles clench up even thinking about it. All that evil, all that power, packed into two tiny syllables.
Then, we have ‘the force.’
As their school year progresses and confrontations are had, as Dave’s belief in religion is explored and his cross into cultures and upbringings other than his own changes his outlook on his surroundings, he begins to ponder the idea of ‘the force,’ his interpretation of race relations around him. He sees it everywhere. It peppers his every interaction with the world around him, and jolts him out of adolescence and into a more adult mindset:
It seemed like the smoke of those riots spread all across the continent, all the way to Boston, like they were looking for their own Reginald Denny, because as far as I could tell they stepped for no other reason than the fact that I was white. But as I ran away…I began to wonder if maybe I was looking at them the wrong way, the same way I must have stared at the TV screen when those dudes bundled Denny—a shook and boggled look that said, You are predators—and maybe that made them want to treat me like prey. All summer, I tried to deny the force, but I felt it every time I got checked on my way past the Shaw Homes...And I felt ashamed of that…and yeah, I’ve been feeling ashamed that the force has been with me, pretty much nonstop…
Green was an entertaining read and one that provoked thought. There were moments when I laughed out loud and, yes, even a moment when I cried. There’s something for everyone within these pages, because we all know at least one of these characters, from the granola do-gooders to that kid from the wrong side of the tracks. Here’s your chance now to get glimpse into their world. I wouldn’t be saying enough to say that I highly recommend this book for readers of all sizes, colors and creeds who are ready to open their minds and their outlooks. I even recommend it for all ages, because the cultural boundaries explored within Green are real and not to be ignored. The tragedies of everyday life surrounding us are real and not to be downplayed. And the line between the haves and the have nots, the clueless and the culturally aware, the predators and the prey is real and should never, ever be doubted. 4.5 stars. *****
*I received a copy of this novel from the publisher, Random House, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
See my exclusive interview with Chloe Benjamin about her novel The Immortalists here!
“There are two major theories about how to stop aging…” “…It soundSee my exclusive interview with Chloe Benjamin about her novel The Immortalists here!
“There are two major theories about how to stop aging…” “…It sounds like you’re saying we can choose to live. Or we can choose to survive.”
Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists is a thoughtfully executed novel written in simple, yet often poetic, prose that allowed the characters’ voices at their most forceful to shine on their own past the narrative itself. More than that, it is a novel crafted around a question we all ask ourselves more often than we’d care to admit: “Is it more important to truly live or to survive? To dare to dream at our grandest or to play it safe?” And, if you knew the exact day on which you’d die, would you live your life any differently than you would without that hateful knowledge?
In their youth, the Gold siblings follow a rumor to the home of a Gypsy fortune teller who gives them the knowledge they seek: the exact dates of their deaths. These prophecies propel them forward for the rest of their lives, influencing their decisions, changing the courses of their lives and plunging the question into the forefront of their minds forever: Was the fortune teller right, and, if so, can they change the course of their own fates?
It’s an intriguing idea, we must all admit. A scary one. A downright chilling one. And the leitmotif Benjamin poses to her reader manifests itself throughout the novel with compelling force, from the exploration of God and country’s place within our existence, to what the prophecy of one’s own death does to such beliefs. Do we cling to such notions and ingrained dogmas all the way to the end, cowering under them safely like warm, childhood blankets, or using them to fortify us in our resolve and everyday decisions—or, do we slough off and away such religious and secular beliefs and become our own reason for living, our own life force, whether to our own detriment or benefit?
The Immortalists bounds along a timeline spanning five decades, trotting through the start of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco—
“You weren’t terrified?” “No, not then…When doctors said we should be celibate, it didn’t feel like they were telling us to choose between sex and death. It felt like they were asking us to choose between death and life. And no one who worked that hard to live life authentically, to have sex authentically, was willing to give it up.”
¬–toward Las Vegas in the 80s and into the early years of this century, tackling tough questions, such as the logistics behind increasing the human lifespan—and the politics of attempting such a thing. For readers who enjoy novels of sweeping timelines, they’re sure to find a treat in Benjamin’s latest novel. The period settings weren’t quite as immersive as I’d hoped—the societal and technological differences in backdrop between the decades were noted but not submerging in a way that allowed me to really feel I was moving from decade to decade with true authenticity. However, what I did take from this book were lessons to carry with me, delivered by poignant phrasing that outshone the actual stories of the four siblings’ lives. And that resonated loudly enough to forgive such specifics.
I had an interesting relationship with this novel as I continued my reader’s affair with it. I could not relate specifically to any one of the characters in this book. I would not have been friends with any of them in real life, and I did feel that some of the plotlines were predictable. BUT, I learned a lesson from every single one of the siblings that I took with me until the end, and each of those moments of recognition were special.
What do you want?...and if [she] answered him honestly she would have said this: To go back to the beginning. She would tell her thirteen-year-old self not to visit the woman. To her twenty-five-year old self: Find Simon, forgive him…She’d tell herself she would die, she would die, they all would…She’d tell herself that what she really wanted was not to live forever, but to stop worrying…”
This is a novel with a strong core and a big heart, with a moral and a central theme to tie all the threads together. Chloe Benjamin’s second novel continued her thus-far-established trend of exploring existential questions in our everyday lives, creating a brand for her that is sure to glimmer and shine, attracting new readers from far and wide. 4 stars ****
*I received a copy of this novel from the publisher, G.P. Putnam's Sons, via Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
See my EXCLUSIVE interview with Francesca Hornak here!
Seven Days of Us is the quintessential heartwarming family novel, a quick and quaint little holiSee my EXCLUSIVE interview with Francesca Hornak here!
Seven Days of Us is the quintessential heartwarming family novel, a quick and quaint little holiday read to be devoured in one sitting. With flashes of wit, intellect and social reflection peppered in, Seven Days offers a great combination of laughter and insight, as we get to know these characters while they re-get to know each other. Imagine being stuck in your home for seven days with your family, unable to flee into the night, unable to avoid the unavoidable. To me, that sounds like the worst kind of torture! And Francesca Hornak brought that feeling to life in a meaningful way that allows the reader to identify with at least one of the characters, always a treat.
This read is not one that will bog you down, nor is it one that will stay with me, personally, for very long. Seven Days of Us is a novel that stays in its lane; it doesn't try to masquerade as something it's not, and I can respect that. I don't know that it was "sharply" anything, as the blurb implied, and the ending did hurry to a close like an urgent hand at your back. BUT, it is a read for the lovers of the quaint and cozy literary experience, a novel for anyone who loved the movie The Family Stone (2005), and a delightful treat for those on holiday to pass the time and enjoy a chuckle. If that's what you're looking for, you've found a home and a warm mug of Earl Grey within the pages of Hornak's Seven Days. 3*
**Thank you so much to Berkley Publishing who reached out to me and sent me a physical ARC of this book!
See my exclusive interview with Sarah Schmidt about her novel See What I Have Done here!
Sarah Schmidt's See What I Have Done is a novel that has the aSee my exclusive interview with Sarah Schmidt about her novel See What I Have Done here!
Sarah Schmidt's See What I Have Done is a novel that has the advantage of having a truly titillating premise and a built-in fan base of readers who already know of Miss Lizzie Borden’s infamy:
Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.
If you’ve ever sung that “nursery rhyme” to yourself, you’re already at least a step ahead. See What I Have Done has its roots in the factual 1892 trial of Lizzie Borden--the characters are even based on and named for the real people who were in and out of the house on the fateful day of the murders. With those common facts out of the way, Schmidt rolls up her sleeves and dives into the task of reconstructing that fateful day and retelling the notorious story of Miss Lizzie Borden.
Let me start by first of all saying that Schmidt has a true talent for finding her readers' pressure points and picking at them consistently, a skill that sets a suspenseful novel apart from a predictable one. I can see this author's method working for so many readers, pulling them in and making them feel immersed in these characters' very thoughts. But, it didn't work for me. In fact, there were times when this novel was an uphill struggle for me.
The one thing that will always stick out to me about this novel is Lizzie’s temperament. Throughout the novel it was eerily strange despite her obviously childlike temperament, menacing just below the surface in a way that was clearly deliberate on the author’s part. Whether she was not in her right mind in a vaguely sociopathic way or in a childlike way hinting at mental retardation I could not fully tell (though I’m leaning toward the latter), but it certainly functioned to add a little unpredictability and upheaval in the otherwise monotonous 19th century lives these characters seemed to lead.
However, there was something about the execution of this novel that really turned me off—possibly intentionally—but I definitely didn’t take to it the way I would have wanted to. Lizzie’s personality was like an itch under my skin, one I wanted to scratch until she was gone completely and long forgotten about. Instead of building suspense or anxiety, her twitchiness and oddities really just annoyed me to the point that I could no longer stand her. I wanted to be out of her head—away from her altogether at times—at any cost. Only, her chapters were by far the most interesting, as the others seemed to melt into the background for me as a reader. The characters’ voices didn’t pull me in; their actions didn’t interest me. So, that left me with Lizzie, and you can imagine the conundrum that left me in as a reader! :) There was just too much of it. A titillating hint here and there is intriguing; 5 hints toward her psychological oddities per page, every page is annoying. That’s what created that itching sensation under my skin, the tap dancing on my reader Spidey senses.
The thing is, Sarah Schmidt’s ability to affect her reader in that way is a true gift, a skill that's difficult to hone and display. So, just because it didn’t work for me personally doesn’t mean that I don’t see the cleverness and mental dexterity it took to execute that aspect of this novel, and for that I tip my hat off to her. I’d recommend this novel to lovers of The Village (2004) or of historical mysteries in general. There’s absolutely a fan base out here for Sarah Schmidt and See What I Have Done, and I look forward to giving her another shot the next time she hits the shelves. 3 stars ***
**I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**
SEE MY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JOE MCGINNISS, JR. HERE!
“He was a thirty-two-year-old, college-educated father drowning his family in debt but eneSEE MY EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JOE MCGINNISS, JR. HERE!
“He was a thirty-two-year-old, college-educated father drowning his family in debt but energized by a simple prospect: proving to Phoebe that he alone, not a New York banker or some handsome young physician, was the winning play still.”
Oh, my God. I can’t remember the last time I was so satisfied with a read and applauding of its ending! It was so well done; the writing was just phenomenal. It never came off as corny or cliché, over-embellished or melodramatic. Just real. Honest and real. Fearless and foreboding, raw and sharp at the edges, McGinniss’ Carousel Court was like staring into a mirror with no makeup, no fluff.
Nick and Phoebe Maguire are the everyman: He remembers when they were both fresh out of college, full of ambition, energetic and in love. He remembers before he lost his way and she met JW. Now they’re 32—not old at all—but what has happened to them? So they decide to go for it:
“…it seemed that everyone had a house or was buying one…young married professionals buying and selling houses for six-figure profits. So why not them? Of course them, finally them…they quickly negotiated an interest-only, zero-down, 125 percent renovation mortgage on the house in Serenos.” And so it began.
The first thing I thought when I opened this one was: The Big Short. Carousel Court takes that to a whole other level, to a personal level that you can feel. It reaches inside of the macrocosm that was our economy in 2008 and pulls out a first-hand story of people who could’ve been your neighbors, who could’ve been your friends.
And if we’re going to get one thing straight, it’s this: McGinniss’ voice is unique, his writing style distinctive. It’s filled with a sort of nervous energy—ideas hopping around but somehow all fitting nicely together—that is magnetically kinetic. It was almost like free hand, jumping from topic to topic and scene to scene sometimes frantically, creating a brilliantly fast pace set in the California suburbs. It was a lens punctuated with short, curt lines that hit home right in the gut and blunt observations that rang so true that they could only be that. Honestly, I found it hard to follow in the beginning—until I didn’t. At some point, a few pages in, I relaxed into the writing style and let it carry me away. If you’re resistant to an unconventional voice, one that’s punctuated with terseness and modern-day, suburban grit (think the movie Closer, 2004) this read might take a second to sink into, but that’s okay. You’ll get there. Keep going. Though I had to re-read some of the passages in the beginning to find my footing with them, I found it intriguingly refreshing and immersive.
My sole qualm was a minute one: I’m still not sure if it was my own misunderstanding, but I found inconsistencies with Phoebe’s character, which nagged at me but didn’t ruin the read or bog me down with the necessity of clarity: is she fair-haired or brunette, 30 or 32 years old? (I feel like I read all of these about her and wasn’t sure which was correct.) But those perceived incongruences didn’t make her any less appealing to watch or any less deserving of my attention.
I rooted for Nick and Phoebe every step of the way, right up to the very last page. Every wrong move, every fight and sharp remark, every scathing text message furiously tapped out on an iPhone and every feeling of self-doubt—I felt it with them, and it felt genuine. They were people I wouldn’t mind grabbing a beer with, and I know I’d love every second of it if I could. I was behind them the whole way, and I wanted them to win.
“Fall, Daddy, fall…”
In Carousel Court, McGinniss truly captured the rhythms and fine grooves of our lives, of college-educated, middle classers right on the line of Gen X and Millennial. He tackles the question, without ever explicitly stating it, that we must all ask ourselves from time to time in this day and age: “How did I go from walking the stage, the world at my feet, full of conquering ambition, to this? How did I get here? And can I get back?” If life has ever dealt you a sobering, swift slap in the face, if you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, pick this one up. And if you haven’t, still pick this one up: you might need a little dose of reality. With that in mind, Carousel grabbed a well-deserved, happily-given 5 stars. *****
I received an advance-read copy of this book from the publisher, Simon & Schuster, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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