Aug. 10th, 2016 03:29 pm
Digested but not forgotten
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muckefuckAs much as it came close to being a slog at times, as I neared the end of Search sweet country, I began to feel a bit farklemt at the thought of having to say farewell to the various characters. I was in a Thai restaurant at the time and wondered if I should wait for someplace a bit more quiet and private, like home, but I had only a few pages at that point and waiting for me at home was a hurried dinner and a condo meeting.
About halfway through, I figured out that the complicated relationship between Kofi Loww and Adwoa Adde was the narrative thread on which the novel hung and, when that resolved, I knew we'd entred the denouement and the rest of the chapters would simply be tying up the stories of the rest of the cast of characters. The conclusions to their stories are satisfying without being too too neat and Laing ends on a hopeful if melancholy note. The heavies retreat into the background, the ordinary people get on with their lives, and Accra abides.
At times the writing veers close to cliché (particularly the way he treats abstract qualities as concrete objects and in the recurrence of metaphors rooted in Ghanaian cuisine), but at its best it's still vibrant and fresh. Despite being published forty years ago, the work doesn't feel especially dated, but I wonder how much that's due to my basic ignorance of Ghanaian popular culture (so that a reference to a popular song or a style of dress would be equally foreign to me even if it were current). I'm going to be curious to look back in a year or so and see how much of it sticks with me.
So what next? I'm reading Woodrell's harrowing Outlaw album while I decide. I'm leaning toward Yaşar Kemal's sequel to İnce Memed, which should be a quick read and appropriate to my state of mind. There are some other things in the hopper--Atwood, Hulme, Maraire, the balance of Os Maias--but I feel like they may be better suited to cooler weather.
About halfway through, I figured out that the complicated relationship between Kofi Loww and Adwoa Adde was the narrative thread on which the novel hung and, when that resolved, I knew we'd entred the denouement and the rest of the chapters would simply be tying up the stories of the rest of the cast of characters. The conclusions to their stories are satisfying without being too too neat and Laing ends on a hopeful if melancholy note. The heavies retreat into the background, the ordinary people get on with their lives, and Accra abides.
At times the writing veers close to cliché (particularly the way he treats abstract qualities as concrete objects and in the recurrence of metaphors rooted in Ghanaian cuisine), but at its best it's still vibrant and fresh. Despite being published forty years ago, the work doesn't feel especially dated, but I wonder how much that's due to my basic ignorance of Ghanaian popular culture (so that a reference to a popular song or a style of dress would be equally foreign to me even if it were current). I'm going to be curious to look back in a year or so and see how much of it sticks with me.
So what next? I'm reading Woodrell's harrowing Outlaw album while I decide. I'm leaning toward Yaşar Kemal's sequel to İnce Memed, which should be a quick read and appropriate to my state of mind. There are some other things in the hopper--Atwood, Hulme, Maraire, the balance of Os Maias--but I feel like they may be better suited to cooler weather.
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