A review by thecriticalreader
Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng

challenging reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Review:
In Call and Response, author Gothataone Moeng delivers a collection of short stories about rural and city life in modern-day Botswana. Each of her characters faces loneliness, alienation, and melancholy as they yearn for personal fulfillment amidst a complex network of familial, cultural, financial, and social obligations. Her stories are fastidious, reflective, and concerned with the minutiae of everyday life—as such, this book is slow-paced to the occasional point of dullness. However, Moeng rewards readers for their patience with quiet revelations about life in a country that is simultaneously leaping toward modernity and clinging to cultural legacies borne from native heritage, colonialism, and the specters of not-so-distant national crises.
 
The Run-Down: 
You will probably like Call and Response if . . . 
·      You like slow-paced, reflective slice-of-life stories 
·      You want to immerse yourself in the lives of modern-day Batswana
·      You like stories that reflect on themes of family, patriarchy, modern social and technological change, and national identity
 
You might not like Call and Response if . . .
·      You want to read a book that pays more attention to the joys of life in Botswana than its sorrows
·      You want to a collection of read fast-paced, gripping stories
 
 
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