SUNDAY, JULY 11, 2010
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This, no doubt, is one of the best books I have read this year, and I think ever. The writing is careful, clear, crisp, oh, just beautiful. The opening line, 'On the iron-framed bed a single, scant sheet has moulded itself into the form of the human beneath.' And from there we are taken away. I think the author's gift lies in her ability to describeeverything in a scene, giving it that wholesome-ness, giving a character depth just by the world that surrounds him. The writing ispatient, yes, that is the word, patient writing, that is not in a hurry to go anywhere, that says to the reader, 'Take it easy, we are going to get to where we need to go'. From reading this lovely book, I get the feeling that Aminatta Forna has the ability to write about anything, her vivid descriptions just have that quality. This book has its 'themes', of a ravaged country that has come out of a civil uprising, rebels and armies and destruction, yet, really, it is not a thematic book; its strength does not lie so much in the themes as it does in the characters; I think the characters could very simply stand on their own. Oh, and the author is very creative; we shift from first person to third person and just when we think it is told from the point of view of two characters, Elias Cole, who is our first person protagonist, and Adrian Lockheart, who is our third person protagonist, we are introduced to a third person view of Kai Mansaray somewhere along in the book. This book does not follow writing rules, it seems to want to do what it does, we have first person and third persons put in where they fit, and it works, that is the lovely thing, it works really well. And in the middle of all this beautiful characterisation, we have intertwining plots, where the lives of the protagonists intersect in surprising and sometimes delightful, sometimes heartbreaking ways, that good-old story telling. This is a complex book, a complex story, a book about getting to know people, its beauty is in its ordinary characters, ordinary in the sense that they are not some grand characters on the scale of social class, extraordinary in the author's stark individualisation of each character.Here is the synopsis at the back of the book:
'Adrian Lockheart is a psychologist escaping his life in England. In the dirt and dust of Freetown he befriends a young surgeon, Kai Mansaray, and begins to build a new life as Kai makes plans to leave. In the hospital Adrian encounters an elderly man, Elias Cole, whose memories are recorded in notebooks and reveal an obsession with Saffia - a woman he loved - and Julius, her fiery husband. In a country torn apart by repression and war, four individual lives collide in a story about friendship, understanding, absolution and the indelible effects of the past...'
There is a part in the book where the author juxtaposes suspense, where Elias Cole and Adrian Lockheart are in riddling situations and the author balances the suspense by leaving a character hanging in one chapter and moving on to the situation of the other character, the suspense is tremendous and beautifully balanced; I did not know whether to run from one character to the other, and this part of the book kept me reading well into the night.
You can actually see the work that the author put into this piece of writing; she is precise in her descriptions of surgical procedures and pyschological illnesses; Kai is a surgeon and Adrian is a psychologist. Saffia is into botany, and here again, the author shows off a wide range of knowledge on plant species. Adrian is also a bird lover; again, the author proves knowledgeable in this area. Interesting to learn; in an interview with the Financial Times, the author says 'I temporarily became a surgeon for Memory of Love. I spent two weeks in an operating theatre, watching amputations, and I loved it.' The effort and dedication put into this book is evident in its quality.
There are two scenes in the book that dragged for me; one is a scene towards the end when Adrian goes to visit his mother in Norfolk; I was impatient to get back to 'the rest of the story'. The other is the last Chapter in the book; Chapter 56. It is a chapter of tying up the ends, the 'loose ends', which I thought were beautiful in their loose state, I thought the story could have ended perfectly well in the penultimate chapter, for me the last chapter tied up the ends and ended neatly in a manner that was different in tone from the rest of the story. Nevertheless, this does not detract from, all in all, a story very well told. Brilliant stuff from Aminatta Forna; visit the author's website http://www.aminattaforna.com/.