By turns luminous and horrific, this debut ensnares the reader from the
first page and lingers in the memory long after its tragic end.
First-person narrator Kambili Achike is a 15-year-old Nigerian girl
growing up in sheltered privilege in a country ravaged by political
strife and personal struggle. She and her brother, Jaja, and their quiet
mother, who speaks "the way a bird eats, in small amounts," live this
life of luxury because Kambili's father is a wealthy man who owns
factories, publishes a politically outspoken newspaper and outwardly
leads the moral, humble life of a faithful Catholic. The many grateful
citizens who have received his blessings and material assistance call
him omelora, "The One Who Does for the Community." Yet Kambili, Jaja and
their mother see a side to their provider no one else does: he is also a
religious fanatic who regularly and viciously beats his family for the
mildest infractions of his interpretation of an exemplary Christian
life. The children know better than to discuss their home life with
anyone else; "there was so much that we never told." But when they are
unexpectedly allowed to visit their liberated and loving Aunty Ifeoma, a
widowed university professor raising three children, family secrets and
tensions bubble dangerously to the surface, setting in motion a chain of
events that allow Kambili to slowly blossom as she begins to question
the authority of the precepts and adults she once held sacred. In a
soft, searing voice, Adichie examines the complexities of family, faith
and country through the haunted but hopeful eyes of a young girl on the
cusp of womanhood. Lush, cadenced and often disconcerting, this is an
accomplished first effort.
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