Reviews with content warning for Child death - Homegoing

Reviews tagging 'Child death'

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

120 reviews

heyitsashleigh's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

rebekah_florence's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I’ve never felt so whole after completing a book. This is THE best multi-generational family saga I’ve ever read (and I do love to read them). I both hated and loved that we only got to spend a chapter with each character-hated because I longed to learn so much more from each person’s life, loved because I can see how the pivotal moments of each person’s story contributed to the family more and more. Each character was unique and so beautifully and completely developed. Everything about this book was perfect. This will stick with me forever. “Welcome home”❤️

Content Warnings

someonelikeblue's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

Content Warnings

jesshindes's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I came to Homegoing a bit late, or a bit backwards; I read Yaa Gyasi's second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, in book group last year (great choice, thanks Rosie) and only got around to reading her first this year. That wasn't because of any lack of enthusiasm; I loved Transcendent Kingdom and had heard a lot of great things about this novel. All of them were correct! Homegoing packs several centuries, two continents, and dozens of characters into just over 300 pages and somehow manages to give the reader a meaningful insight into all of them. The novel begins with two sisters in what is now Ghana - one who marries a white slaver, one of whom is sold into slavery - and continues on through the line of their descendants up until the present day. Each pair of chapters steps forward another generation along its parallel lines: the branch of the family which stays in Africa and those who are taken to the USA. You drop into a moment of each character's life - maybe a few months, a year - and then whoosh, the baby you've seen toddling around in the previous chapter is an adult and you're seeing the world through their eyes. It's such a compelling narrative effect but in the hands of a less skilful writer, it's easy to see how the characters might have felt flat or emblematic; this is the enslaved character working in the cotton fields, this is the character in early 20th-century Harlem who wishes she were a singer, etc. But it doesn't feel like that. They're all beautifully rendered, complex people and - what I really, really liked - they're all reasonably well-informed about the family who preceded them. They're connected to their ancestors. The people who you know up close are remembered by their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, part of the story of itself that each branch of the family tells. I loved that. Even under circumstances that would make it very easy to lose touch with the past, these histories are not forgotten but rather become a crucial part of how each character sees him or herself.

That connection and that memory is I think particularly important in the context of a novel that necessarily deals with a huge amount of brutality and suffering. Obviously the history of the slave trade and its historical ramifications is a horrible, bleak history of colonial violence and Gyasi doesn't shy away from that (nor should she) but she finds a counterbalance in the way that her characters hang onto their humanity - their family, their community - in the face of everything that is done to them. It's an incredibly tricky balancing act to pull off, I think - to depict the pain clearly and honestly without making a book that's so unrelenting it becomes unbearable - which is one of the very many reasons that I cannot BELIEVE this was a debut novel. What a thing to have written.

Content Warnings