Tag Archives: notables

“Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I read much of “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie while on a brief family trip to Forth. I admit to bowing out of some family time to dip back into this novel of a contemporary woman’s journey from Nigeria to the United Sates, then back.

Much of the story is framed as flashbacks while Ifemelu is having her hair braided for her return to Africa. She reflects on her early days in Nigeria, and her friendship with a young aunt who becomes mistress to a general. When power changes hands, that aunt leaves quickly, ending up in America. Ifemelu follows soon after. Ifemelu’s initial depression, and resorting to performing sex acts for money, contrast with her later success. To her great good fortune, she lands a nanny job with a rich family. She becomes involved with rich and educated men. Thus she has much experience with race and class, and she pulls all of that into a blog that becomes remarkably profitable.

Meanwhile, Obinze, the love of her young life, experiences his own migration story, entering England legally but staying long after his visa expires. After living and working without documentation, he is deported. His fortunes rise in Nigeria as a successful businessman. He comes to see that his marriage, his family, even the way in which he makes money, do not reflect who he wishes to be. He seems not be living by the values his mother nurtured in him.

Adichie reveals and explores a remarkable variety of issues here–race, color, class, shame, and trust. I keep returning to the image of hair braiding as I consider how she does it, weaving together people, places, and politics. I tend to prefer novels that are pared down to just a very narrow chute. Adichie introduces all kinds of minor characters to push the story along. They leave as quickly as they appear. She also provides remarkable detail about clothing, about hair, especially African hair, and about food. It all seems a little messy, maybe too untidy, and yet it works.

I’ll recommend this to book groups who don’t shy away from 500-plus pages. I finished the book with the satisfying sense of a story well told, a better appreciation for the adjustments that immigration requires, and a distinctive view of race and class in America. I’m not surprised “Americanah” landed on this year’s Notable Books list.

“The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards” by Kristopher Jansma

There’s a special pleasure to a book that’s read on a trip. I certainly sensed this in “The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards” by Kristopher Jansma, which I started and finished during a recent trip to Chicago for a library conference.

 It makes a perfect example of why I love reading the titles from the Notable Books List each year–I come across fabulous books that I would have missed otherwise.

 Basically this novel circles around an unnamed narrator and his two most important friends. The story opens as the narrator describes how his mother, a flight attendant, often left  him in the care of vendors at the airport. His ability to fit in, especially to mix among wealthy people, leads to a lifelong pattern of dishonesty. He meets the man who becomes his best friend in their college English class. That friend soon writes a fabulously successful novel, though his life is shadowed by addiction and mental illness. Through that friend, the narrator meets the woman he loves but can never marry. Much of the energy in this novel is generated as the three of them come together, then fall apart.

 Each of the ten chapters could stand alone as a short story, focusing on a particular time and place. Jansma’s genius is how he uses these pieces to pull the whole story together, how an image introduced in one place returns in another.

 How does a writer avoid revealing what others don’t want shared? When should a writer betray a friend to further success? What are the chances for success when relationships are built on lies? How can broken friendships be mended? When is honesty required?

 I was surprised by how readable this book was, given those heavy questions. I credit Jansma’s clever eye for detail and ability to draw attention to a new place. The book goes from the East Coast to New York City to India to Africa and many places between. Part of the pleasure in the reading was just learning where it would take up next. Meg Woltitzer aptly used the phrase, “playfully weird” about this book. I would add “playfully smart.” I know that I missed many well-placed literary allusions.

 I have confessed before to my Pollyanna-ish hope that at last one person will learn and grow in a novel, and end up a better person. That happened here, though it wasn’t easy or pretty.

 I’m not aware of many  people who’ve read this.  I’m hoping a few of my friends will do so soon, so that we can discuss it. I’ll recommend this to people who like literary fiction, especially if they don’t insist on the work being too dark and pessimistic. In the heart of this story of friendship, betrayal, and love, stands that critical question–CAN a leopard change its spots?

“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt

It took some time, but I finally finished all 771 pages of “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt, very likely the longest novel on this year’s Notable Books list. This book has received plenty of attention. I felt like I was arriving a little late to the ball.

It’s the story of Theo, whose mother dies in a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when Theo is 13. In fact, he was with her that day. In the ensuing chaos he ends up in possession of a priceless Dutch painting, “The Goldfinch.” The course of Theo’s life once his mother is gone includes his stay with a rich classmate’s family, a drug-colored exile in Las Vegas where he meets his best-friend-for-life, Boris, and a return to New York where Theo goes into business with one of the warmest-hearted men in America. The novel ends where it begins, Theo in Amsterdam with blood on his hands.

 I found myself surprising intrigued by all of this. One reviewer called the book “Dickensian,” and that helped me put the unlikely and usually crazy characters, not to mention the unlikely plot, in perspective. I liked how people seemed to come and go. Another reviewer referred to the books’ “bewitching urgency.” I found myself liking Theo despite his passivity and alarming tendency to make poor choices over and over and over. I enjoyed the long riffs on art history and furniture restoration. I didn’t take the whole thing seriously, but read it more like an educated romp.

 Some of my friends found it lacking. Few books could live up to the hype of “The Goldfinch.” There seems to be general agreement that Tartt would have improved the novel had she edited out a hundred or so pages. Sometimes key information seemed to missing even in a section filled with dense detail.

 Looking back on it, I see that even though I read it from a shallow place, I was touched by Theo’s descriptions of his grief and loneliness, by the painting’s impact on his sense of himself, by my ragged hope that his friend Hobie really was as warm-hearted as he seemed. I made myself slow down for Tartt’s final-chapter reflections on the impact a piece of art can have, and found them true to my own experience.

 In the end, I recommend it. Not as the Great American Novel, but as a one-of-a-kind work that pulls together a remarkable collection of personalities, topics, and places. I salute Tartt for her writer’s mind that chose it all, then wove it all into place.