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A review by marinaemoore
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
3.0
Yaa Gyasi is a beautiful writer. I very much enjoyed the writing style of this book, and felt like where this book shone was in the almost poetic diary entries that the main character, Gifty, wrote to God.
This book is heavily themed around science vs. religion. Gyasi confronts the reader with some very thoughtful questions around this topic.
All of the above aside, I had a really difficult time getting into this one. I could hardly bring myself to read more than 10 or so pages at a time for the first 130 pages. The remaining 130 ish pages were substantially more engaging for me personally, but I still didn’t leave this book feeling like I knew any of the characters well or felt any sense of connection to them.
I think ultimately, where this book lost me was in the character development, specifically for present-day Gifty. Towards the tail end of the book, Gifty expresses her hopes for her life and about 1/2 of them seemed to be way out of left field based on the insights we gain into Gifty. I also wish we would’ve gotten more context and background into Gifty’s mother at times - I believe it would have been helpful.
This book is heavily themed around science vs. religion. Gyasi confronts the reader with some very thoughtful questions around this topic.
All of the above aside, I had a really difficult time getting into this one. I could hardly bring myself to read more than 10 or so pages at a time for the first 130 pages. The remaining 130 ish pages were substantially more engaging for me personally, but I still didn’t leave this book feeling like I knew any of the characters well or felt any sense of connection to them.
I think ultimately, where this book lost me was in the character development, specifically for present-day Gifty. Towards the tail end of the book, Gifty expresses her hopes for her life and about 1/2 of them seemed to be way out of left field based on the insights we gain into Gifty. I also wish we would’ve gotten more context and background into Gifty’s mother at times - I believe it would have been helpful.