A review by elerireads
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

4.0

Fab. I really enjoyed this! About 50 pages in I was getting a bit worried that it might all be tragic and miserable from start to finish, but actually it's got a very hopeful feel to it, probably to do with how faith-based it is? A few bits and bobs which seemed unrealistic to me - Amina's whole storyline just didn't quite hang together, and some of the biblical criticism that supposedly occurred to Ijeoma during the lessons with her mother seemed way too deep and nuanced for a 13 year old to have come up with on the spot (although maybe I'm doing 13YOs a massive disservice here) so it just came across as Okparanta preaching her own adult thoughts to the reader. None of that detracted much from the reading experience, and it was generally very easy to read, although I can see that lack of familiarity with Nigeria and the Biafran war might pose a few problems - I was very glad I'd read Half of a Yellow Sun beforehand!