December 29, 2009
Recent Reading: Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Our book club read Things Fall Apart as our last selection. Admittedly, I've never read any African fiction and wasn't exactly keen on using my precious pre-holiday reading time to explore it. The group gave the book mixed reviews, ranging from "It was okay, but I'm glad I read it" to "I loved it and will definitely recommend it." Amazingly enough, Keith and I were both in the "loved it" camp.
Consider this to be fair warning: If you want to read a book and like the main character, this is not the book for you. Okonkwo has a few redeeming moments, but fundamentally he is a hard man with hard hands and hard ways. As a matter of fact, during our book discussion, we entertained the question, "Is there a character that you identify with or will take with you?" That was a difficult question that mostly received a resounding "no." (However, there is one scene with Okonkwo's second wife, Ekwefi, that will likely stay with me for a long while.)
Even if I'm not particularly fond of the characters, I was smitten with the language and the rhythms of the book and could almost hear the drumbeats in certain passages. I appreciate any book that can transport me to a land I don't know, make me think of life in a different way, and help me understand characters living their own lives in ways I would never otherwise know.
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Rita Diane Devlin
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