Last time I was in Florida, Mom and I went shopping at Pembroke Pines, a beautiful outdoor mall with a huge Barnes and Noble. While browsing, I noticed that Adichie, whose Half a Yellow Sun I had enjoyed earlier this year, had released a new collection of short stories.
I really enjoyed this book. I don't read many short story collections and didn't connect with Olive Kitteridge. But this was really a spectacular effort and probably a better book than Half a Yellow Sun. Adichie writes very crisply - in roughly ten pages each, she creates a set of independent stories about both modern-day Nigeria and Nigerians living in America. I thought she created characters with more depth and emotion than in her HaYS, despite having less real estate per character.
I also liked how the stories were not connected - I didn't notice any characters or situations even subtly referring to each other. Some stories were told in first person, some in third person, and one is even told in second-person narrative, which is quite unique. She represents both men and women, of all age groups. And she represents people who are satisfied and those are unhappy, on both sides of the ocean. But those differences in tone and style didn't leave with me feeling like I had read a carelessly thrown-together collection of unrelated stories. On the contrary, Adiche used this wide variety of situations and characters to provide a single worldview of Nigeria as a country with a rich history and a complex set of interactions with the 'Western' world.
Great read.
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