December staggered in like a weary mud-encrusted vagabond who had been on her way to someplace else but whose legs had buckled and now she was here. On the second, which in Mapeli Town was known as Epitaph Day, the townspeople awoke while the sky was still silver, still tinged with ruffles of pink and blue. They gargled salt water. They greased their elbows. They tucked a flower in their hair or pinned it on their lapel. They marched to the schoolhouse, where the flag flapped at half-mast for all those who had drowned in the river or choked on a fishbone or stepped on a puff adder while walking to the marketplace. With eyes bleary and heads bowed, the townspeople thought of all the ones they had ever lost. [p. 1]
It's twelve years since Ayosa Ataraxis Brown was born to Nabumbo Promise Brown, but Ayosa's memories go back to 'the Yonder Days, before she'd turned into a girl'. She is often lonely, despite the Fatumas who live in the attic, 'half girl and half reverie', caught by a fisherman four centuries ago. Though her mama is often absent (she's an award-winning photographer), the sense of her is always present for Ayosa, who experiences her mother's memories -- and those of her grandmother, flying doctor Lola Freedom -- in the house that was built by her great-grandmother, irascible English colonist Mabel Brown, after whom the town (Mapeli) was named.
Oduor's prose is intoxicating (I've marked almost every page with highlights). The people of Mapeli are vividly strange. There's Sindano, the café owner who never has any customers and has had ten fiancés die before she could marry them; there's a milkman who never speaks; there's the apothecary Jentrix and her snot-nosed granddaughter Temerity. And there is the river, which never drowns people on Christmas Day, but which swallows and spits out Ayosa several times, and deposits lost things for her to find.
Ayosa is the heart of the novel. Even when she's lonely and miserable her essential joyfulness shines through. She's amiable, curious, clever and lonely: part of the story is about her making friends with Mbui Dash, a 'throwaway girl' who feels even more magical than Ayosa herself, and who is accompanied by an excellent cat named Bwana Matambara.
Things They Lost is not always a happy novel -- Ayosa's glimpses of the Yonder Days, oppression and slavery and murder, are horrific, and there's an ancient murder twisted up in her family history -- but it is always beautiful. It's full of women and girls who find their own paths, make their own rules: it's alive with the smells, sounds and tastes of Ayosa's life (and insects, soooo many insects). Family secrets, surreal death notices on the radio, wraiths who stalk the living: and 'Ayosa Ataraxis Brown, who can't go too many days without listening to a poem.'
This review helped me understand Things They Lost's 1980s Kenyan context and how it's reflected in the novel. It includes a link to a connected short story.
Fulfils the ‘Author from East Africa’ rubric of the Something Bookish Reading Challenge.
No comments:
Post a Comment