Half of a Yellow Sun: Review
Beware. Text contains a few spoilers.
For one so young (as Chimamanda Adiche was when she wrote this), this novel, is Herculean in ambition. The story tackles a family’s fortunes across a tumultuous period in the history of a very young Nigeria. Her genius is in her ability to tell the travails of a nation and of smaller personal issues and not erode the significance and import of each struggle. How do you make sense of a mother carrying her child’s head and place it in context with a husband’s infidelity? This is where she succeeds brilliantly.
She is able to get you in to the climate of the region, the subtle divides in people that are aggravated and exploited by various political forces, the euphoria of creating one's own country, the tragedy of a massacre, the shifts in political power, the uncertainties, the humiliation of defeat. She effortlessly manages the flow of the story and the integrity of her characters through the change in fortunes and the modulation of their roles brought about the war: Olanna moving from a life of luxury to attempting the clamor for baby food in aid camps, Kainene, changing from a ruthless industrialist to running an aid center. It touches in on how society here is a tightly packed non-cohesive unit. Differences abound and are not neatly distilled away into non-intersecting strata of people, like maybe here in the US. Everyday, people subconsciously learn to manage/deal with these differences. Ugwu’s little struggles in correlating his Master’s life with his life in the village. The intellectual Odenigbo, hating and at the same time tolerating his mother from the village who believes his wife to be a witch.
Probably the misstep in her novel is her brief depiction of the horror of war. Her attempt to show the casual cruelty (Pretty sure I borrowed that phrase from some where else) it brings, rings a bit hollow. There is this incident where she shows Ugwu easily joining a gang-rape and then providing a counterpoint when his sister gets raped. The attempt seems half-hearted and discordant with his character.
However, the book has a multitude of compelling characters and some lovely flourishes. The musicality of “Mama Ola”, how beauty lets you be the cornerstone of someone’s memory: “You were that beautiful woman who calmed her at the airport”. Even with its limitations, the book is a rich read in to the essence of a people and the anguish of a struggle.
For one so young (as Chimamanda Adiche was when she wrote this), this novel, is Herculean in ambition. The story tackles a family’s fortunes across a tumultuous period in the history of a very young Nigeria. Her genius is in her ability to tell the travails of a nation and of smaller personal issues and not erode the significance and import of each struggle. How do you make sense of a mother carrying her child’s head and place it in context with a husband’s infidelity? This is where she succeeds brilliantly.
She is able to get you in to the climate of the region, the subtle divides in people that are aggravated and exploited by various political forces, the euphoria of creating one's own country, the tragedy of a massacre, the shifts in political power, the uncertainties, the humiliation of defeat. She effortlessly manages the flow of the story and the integrity of her characters through the change in fortunes and the modulation of their roles brought about the war: Olanna moving from a life of luxury to attempting the clamor for baby food in aid camps, Kainene, changing from a ruthless industrialist to running an aid center. It touches in on how society here is a tightly packed non-cohesive unit. Differences abound and are not neatly distilled away into non-intersecting strata of people, like maybe here in the US. Everyday, people subconsciously learn to manage/deal with these differences. Ugwu’s little struggles in correlating his Master’s life with his life in the village. The intellectual Odenigbo, hating and at the same time tolerating his mother from the village who believes his wife to be a witch.
Probably the misstep in her novel is her brief depiction of the horror of war. Her attempt to show the casual cruelty (Pretty sure I borrowed that phrase from some where else) it brings, rings a bit hollow. There is this incident where she shows Ugwu easily joining a gang-rape and then providing a counterpoint when his sister gets raped. The attempt seems half-hearted and discordant with his character.
However, the book has a multitude of compelling characters and some lovely flourishes. The musicality of “Mama Ola”, how beauty lets you be the cornerstone of someone’s memory: “You were that beautiful woman who calmed her at the airport”. Even with its limitations, the book is a rich read in to the essence of a people and the anguish of a struggle.
posted by Champa at 5:39 PM
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