This is an unusual “roots” book: Anna, a mixed-race child in England, discovers, after her mother’s death, a journal from her African father, whom she never knew. Library research reveals that he had been president of a small West African country known as “the Crocodile” and was alleged to have been involved in the murder of student activists. She bites, and I, as a reader, bit, too.
Anna goes to Africa to find, meet with, and reconcile with a father she never knew. He is a complex, occasionally scary, occasionally warm man, and we are drawn along her pathway of discovery.
In the end, we are still unsure. Is her decision about whether to remain in Africa hers or her father’s?
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK | AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“A beautiful exploration of the often complex parameters of freedom, prejudice, and individual sense of self. Chibundu Onuzo has written a captivating story about a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the West African father she never knew . . . [A] beautiful book about a woman brave enough to discover her true identity.” —Reese Witherspoon
“Onuzo’s sneakily breezy, highly entertaining novel leaves the reader rethinking familiar narratives of colonization, inheritance and liberation.” —The New York Times Book Review
Who doesn’t love this book? It is both telescopic, a universal saga of race and class, and microscopic, about Carney, who wasn’t so much crooked as “bent,” running a legit furniture business in Harlem, with a “shuffle” on the side – radios, TV’s, jewelry – all of suspicious provenance.
The cast of characters – upward mobile black families, snooty rich and powerful whites, shady characters of all colors and persuasions from crooked cops to prostitutes to hoodlums to crooked jewelers – it makes me think of Whitehead as a modern-day Damon Runyon.
There is hair-raising suspense, even horror, when Carney and his cousin get entangled with the really bad guys, told amidst side-splitting humor, mostly delivered deadpan. It's not so much a page-turner but more of an immersion.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, this gloriously entertaining novel is “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny ... about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel" (San Francisco Chronicle).
"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents…
While I am not often a fan of post-modernist tricks in fiction, this book(s) within a book is not only clever, it’s a brain stimulant. A novel? An autobiography, clearly as an unfinished draft? A memoir? How does that make a book?
On first read, one is unsure of one’s footing, but the landscape does settle, bit by bit. The writing styles in the individual sections are brilliant parodies of both genre and personality.
As one proceeds, the connections between the different stories begin to emerge. Liars all? For me, it was not so much the story of Andrew Bevel but the intricacy of the telling that astonished and delighted me.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize The Sunday Times Bestseller
Trust is a sweeping, unpredictable novel about power, wealth and truth, set against the backdrop of turbulent 1920s New York. Perfect for fans of Succession.
Can one person change the course of history?
A Wall Street tycoon takes a young woman as his wife. Together they rise to the top in an age of excess and speculation. But now a novelist is threatening to reveal the secrets behind their marriage, and this wealthy man's story - of greed, love and betrayal - is about to slip from his grasp.
Professor Martin Quint’s marriage to Jenny has been compromised by a sexual indiscretion. Can trust, once shattered, ever be restored?
InA Different Purpose, a skilled therapist guides the troubled couple into exploring past traumas amid a sudden tripling of Martin’s academic load and an unnerving racial incident at his son’s school.
They discover that to blame is easy, but to understand, and, hence, to forgive, is not. In this, the final volume of The Martin Quint Trilogy, some questions are answered, but others arise that have no answer.
