Van has finished reading…Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Was it intentional, I wonder, effectively to name-check Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in the opening sentence? What surprised me is that it wasn’t Achebe I was first reminded of with Purple Hibiscus but James Baldwin’s Go Tell it On The Mountain. Adichie weaves a truly cloying sense of claustrophobia in those opening chapters that, together with the religious mania and teenage rebellion took me instantly to Baldwin’s back yard.

Once removed from the affluence of the city the obvious comparisons with Achebe shone through. Above all things I think this is due to the backdrop Adichie gives us; the pervading colourwash of colonialism. It lingers, not so much informs as taints each character’s perspective. It’s a story not just of an adolescent girl’s awakening (and also her residual blindness), but of a country’s too. Sometimes it’s a deeply uncomfortable read, but all the better for it.

It also feels not so much the passing on, but the taking up of a baton. I’m sure Achebe would be proud.

Van has finished reading…Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch

This book didn’t end up where I expected it to, the turn and the realisation coming about half way through. It turns quite effortlessly from the naive and optimistic to the wholly unrelenting. The power of the book, I think, is in Birch’s description; at times broad impressionist streaks, at others the minute attention of a realist, but either way she lets her readers feel the scene she paints, and convincingly enough that you start to wonder whether she has suffered these things first hand.

Van has finished reading…The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch