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lilanye 's review for:
We Need New Names
by NoViolet Bulawayo
Overall I liked it.
The fragmented writing style, going from scene to another with no apparent relevance in between them, and the shifts in narrative (a child narrator, a teenage narrator and a collective voice of immigrants) really worked in my opinion. However, there is something definitely lacking in the novel, keeping me from rating it higher, at maximum I would rate it 3,5. My issue is with the overall feeling that I got from reading - the book didn't burn in my fingers and invite me to pick it up. I enjoyed it, but wasn't dazzled by it.
On another note, a lot of other critiques mention the overflow and 'name-dropping' of issues, which bothered them. For me, though, at first I was a bit puzzled by it, but then I started to think about it: who am I to say that these things weren't, in fact, real life for these people, and then why shouldn't they be mentioned in the story, even if just by 'name-dropping'? Especially in the beginning, with the child narrator, can we truly expect a political commentary? It is quite clear from the language used that it is a child focalizer, as well. Then mentioning something like the money in Mother of Bodies' suitcase, or the AIDS ('sickness') epidemic just in a side sentence is okay. More than okay.
The fragmented writing style, going from scene to another with no apparent relevance in between them, and the shifts in narrative (a child narrator, a teenage narrator and a collective voice of immigrants) really worked in my opinion. However, there is something definitely lacking in the novel, keeping me from rating it higher, at maximum I would rate it 3,5. My issue is with the overall feeling that I got from reading - the book didn't burn in my fingers and invite me to pick it up. I enjoyed it, but wasn't dazzled by it.
On another note, a lot of other critiques mention the overflow and 'name-dropping' of issues, which bothered them. For me, though, at first I was a bit puzzled by it, but then I started to think about it: who am I to say that these things weren't, in fact, real life for these people, and then why shouldn't they be mentioned in the story, even if just by 'name-dropping'? Especially in the beginning, with the child narrator, can we truly expect a political commentary? It is quite clear from the language used that it is a child focalizer, as well. Then mentioning something like the money in Mother of Bodies' suitcase, or the AIDS ('sickness') epidemic just in a side sentence is okay. More than okay.