A review by silver_lining_in_a_book
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 

It took me many years to realize that it’s hard to live in this world. I don’t mean the mechanics of living, because for most of us, our hearts will beat, our lungs will take in oxygen, without us doing anything at all to tell them to. For most of us, mechanically, physically, it’s harder to die than it is to live. But still we try to die. We drive too fast down winding roads, we have sex with strangers without wearing protection, we drink, we use drugs. We try to squeeze a little more life out of our lives. It’s natural to want to do that. But to be alive in the world, every day, as we are given more and more and more, as the nature of “what we can handle” changes and our methods for how we handle it change, too, that’s something of a miracle.

I went into this book without major expectations. Looking back now, I recognise the in-depth discussions about race, depression and addiction. I found the writing to be beautiful and creatively crafted, which certainly softened the heaviness of the topics being discussed.

Certain pictures that Gyasi's writing painted in my mind have been seared in there forever, such as the parallels drawn between Gifty watching her mother wash her older brother and later when she is washing her mother. Particular themes also resonated very closely with my own experience, like the internal struggle between science and religion. All of this conveyed through Gyasi's incredible writing, such as this work of art: My memories of him, though few, are mostly pleasant, but memories of people you hardly know are often permitted a kind of pleasantness in their absence. It's those who stay who are judged the harshest, simply by virtue of being around to be judged, made for a lovely reading experience.

However, almost the entire book is a stream-of-consciousness about the interplay of religion and science from the perspective of Gifty and her childhood. While her thoughts on this are interesting, they generally leave the reader without major insight. Especially as Gifty never seems to get anywhere with her thoughts about religion, God and the church. As someone who is very much put-off by organised religion, I struggled relating to this book at certain moments. The book spends a lot of time quoting the Bible, or referencing the Scripture, or using prayer as the sole means to fix issues (some of these moments felt humourous at first, the further I got in this novel, the more I felt that that was not the author's intent).

Moreover, Gifty is not a character that managed to really grow through the hardships she has experienced in this book. She is exploring and uncovering all the thoughts and feelings we go through when dealing with trauma, but unlike most of us who try to keep this self-searching hidden, she brings it to light, examines and discects it. She is mean and spiteful, but tender and desperately needing affection. It’s a complex portrait of recovery that takes years, even a lifetime, to master, but the adult version of her sounds exactly like the young version of her that she reminisces about. She comes across as unsympathetic, self-righteous, and somewhat callous towards those trying to offer her a hand of support. She is bent on suffering alone, as if that is a noble pursuit.

I think what really lost me in this novel was the structure. It lacks structure as the narrative jumps around in time and space as one's mind may well do when in bouts of depression, but ultimately causing real confusion as we delve into memories that are not our own at random moments and unpacking them for the reader. This structure certainty makes sense for Gifty's mental state, it did not make for the most clear story format and ultimately left me feeling more unanchored than Gifty herself.