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A review by bobthebookerer
Seesaw by Timothy Ogene
5.0
This novel starts with a slow, drawling sarcasm that, once you've adapted to its rhythm, realise just how clever this novel is.
Our main character has published one novel, a novel he rejects and feels physically uncomfortable thinking about, and feels a failure, especially considering its print run of 50.
Having destroyed almost every copy himself, he is surprised to find that a woman in the US has not only read it, but wants to offer him a fellowship on a prestigious writing programme because of it.
He goes along, his heart not fully into it, and is a drop-out of sorts- he doesn't write anything more when there, and is bemused by the pretentious self-promotion of other writers on his programme, who all seem to think that they are writing The Next Great (insert adjective here) Novel. He has no such aspirations and becomes increasingly alienated from it all, and from himself.
However, here is where the detached tone of the book does something quite extraordinary- the narrator is an observer of these other people who are so obsessed with themselves and their own mythologies that they fail to see the ridiculousness of the whole situation, or to see how they are putting our narrator on a pedestal to be an icon or role model for the whole of Africa for their own ends, failing to understand anything apart from the confirmation of their own biases.
Although we are meant to see his inability to complete the programme as a failure, he ultimately emerges from the book perhaps the most grounded. The people he meets often want to be the one to have secured 'authenticity', whilst growing further from it every day.
I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Our main character has published one novel, a novel he rejects and feels physically uncomfortable thinking about, and feels a failure, especially considering its print run of 50.
Having destroyed almost every copy himself, he is surprised to find that a woman in the US has not only read it, but wants to offer him a fellowship on a prestigious writing programme because of it.
He goes along, his heart not fully into it, and is a drop-out of sorts- he doesn't write anything more when there, and is bemused by the pretentious self-promotion of other writers on his programme, who all seem to think that they are writing The Next Great (insert adjective here) Novel. He has no such aspirations and becomes increasingly alienated from it all, and from himself.
However, here is where the detached tone of the book does something quite extraordinary- the narrator is an observer of these other people who are so obsessed with themselves and their own mythologies that they fail to see the ridiculousness of the whole situation, or to see how they are putting our narrator on a pedestal to be an icon or role model for the whole of Africa for their own ends, failing to understand anything apart from the confirmation of their own biases.
Although we are meant to see his inability to complete the programme as a failure, he ultimately emerges from the book perhaps the most grounded. The people he meets often want to be the one to have secured 'authenticity', whilst growing further from it every day.
I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.