The Thing Around
Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie
218|Fourth Estate|1st
October 2009
Synopsis
From
the Orange Prize-winning author of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ come twelve dazzling
stories that turn a penetrating eye on the ties that bind men and women,
parents and children, Nigeria and the West.
In
‘A Private Experience’, a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor
Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and
fears she's been pushing away.
In
‘Tomorrow Is Too Far’, a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds
her brother’s death.
The
young mother at the centre of ‘Imitation’ finds her comfortable life threatened
when she learns that her husband back in Lagos has moved his mistress into
their home.
And
the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to
America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though
falling in love brings her desires nearly in reach, a death in her homeland
forces her to re-imagine them.
Searing
and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding
confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s prodigious storytelling powers.
Mini-Review
I'm a bit intimidated by the list
of awards and oceans of praise that follows Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie so I
wanted to start with her short story collection. And now I’ve bought all three
of her novels to devour!
Adichie grew up in Nigeria and
now splits her time between there and America, and so are the 12 stories in
this collection. I was quickly embarrassed by how little I know about Nigeria,
its history, politics, culture and religions. I knew nothing, and I’m ashamed
of how that part of the world is completely ignored in Western education. I
learnt a lot about the structure of families, education and the history of
violence in Nigeria, particularly Lagos where a lot of these stories are set.
The
Thing Around Your Neck deals
a lot with the clashing of culture between Nigeria and America. I found it
really interesting how alien the US is to Adichie’s heroines as that was how I
viewed the cultural discussions about Nigeria. There are both extraordinary and
ordinary women in both ordinary and extraordinary situations and I just
couldn’t wrap my head around how in depth I got to know Adichie’s heroines in
only 20-40 pages. I was blown away by her skill at drawing characters and they
feel how Virginia Woolf describes her approach to writing characters: “I dig
out beautiful caves beneath my characters”.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a
masterful storyteller and considering what she can do in a short story, I’m
incredibly excited to dive into her novels.
Treats,
Lara Williams
144|Freight
Books|3rd March 2016
Synopsis
“Dance like nobody gives a crap. Drink like you
don’t have a family to go home to. Love because what else is the point.”
So says one of the characters in Lara Williams’
extraordinary debut short story collection. Treats is a
break-up album of tales covering relationships, the tyranny of choice, and
self-navigation. This fresh, beguiling new voice paints a portrait of contemporary
adulthood, balancing wry humour with a pervading sense of alienation in the
digital era.
Williams’ characters struggle with how to negotiate
intimacy within relationships and isolation when single, the pitfalls and
indignities when dating, dragged down by dissatisfaction. Meanwhile the
dilemmas of life play out, including abortion, depression, extra-marital
affairs, infatuation, new baby anxiety, bereavement, hair loss, sexual ethics,
cats, and taxidermy.
Mini-Review
I picked
up Treats purely because of the
glowing reviews it has received on booktube and I was completely blown away.
Lara Williams’ debut is possibly my favourite short story collections and one
of my favourite books of the year so far.
Lara
Williams’ debut collection is comprised of 23 short fictions about the trials
and tribulations of being a mid-twenty-something/early-thirty-something in 21st
Century England. Lots of the stories are quite dark and gritty, but they remain
fresh and funny. Practically each story is a punch in the throat in its own
right and I had to take a small break in between each story to digest what I
had just read.
Though
most of the stories deal with the same overarching themes: the disillusionment
of adulthood, the disappointment with life and leaving behind the idealism of
university, but Williams’ also tackles some really serious topics with honesty
and frankness, featuring people from across the board so it's impossible to get
bored. Or even to guess what is coming in the next story – it kept me on my toes
and I didn’t want to stop reading.
Treats is
fresh, sharp, funny and brutally honest and I’ll be reading everything Lara
Williams writes. If you’re stumbling through adulthood wondering how on earth
that happened, this is the collection for you.
Sweet Home, Carys Bray
192|Windmill Books|25th
February 2016
Synopsis
They
say there’s no place like home. It’s where the heart is…
Meet
the little boy who believes in miracle.
Meet
the mother who loves to bring babies home from the newborn aisle of the
supermarket.
Meet
the husband who carves a longed-for baby out of ice as a gift for his wife.
Meet
the widow who is reminded of romance whilst standing at the kitchen sink.
In
this prize-winning short story collection, Carys Bray weaves together moments
of joy, heartache, sadness and unwavering love as told through seventeen very
different notions of home.
Mini-Review
Carys Bray’s short story
collection is one I've wanted to read since hearing about it across booktube
and I really enjoyed it.
The collection covers all facets
of home and family: the sadness, the struggles, the joy, the frustration, the everyday
and the magical. I loved the mixture of realism and magical realism in Sweet Home. Some of the stories were
achingly sad and packed a real punch and others were really quite unsettling. The
variety kept me on my toes and each story was nice and short.
I really like the themes of the
collection and the writing in Sweet Home so
I’m definitely interested in reading Bray’s novels.
Sophie
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