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A review by rarewren
Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton
2.0
Sixteen-year-old Chanda must take on the harrowing responsibility of planning her baby sister's funeral, nursing her sick mama, mothering her little siblings, and sheltering her abused best friend--not to mention trying to keep up with school. Compounding her struggles are an obnoxious busybody of a neighbor and an oppressive aura of secrecy and shame surrounding the family. Ultimately Chanda must overcome her own fear of AIDS before bravely confronting the superstitions of her community. With vivid first-person narration portraying the complex emotions of an adolescent, Stratton evokes a fictional Sub-Saharan Africa and chronicles the action of the story at an intense pace.
This is a well-written and absorbing book that I just didn't end up liking very much. I was excited to read it, because I have been seeking out fiction set in Africa and did not yet have young adult books on my radar, and my expectations were probably way too high. The same narration that may well appeal to many readers did not work for me: I wanted a wider view of Chanda's world, with less inner monologue. (THE HUNGER GAMES irked me for the same reason.) I also wish the author had set the story in a real place and adopted a more authentic style of language. Perhaps I would be less fussy if my reading had not come on the heels of THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN (set in real towns near Spokane, with an utterly convincing adolescent narrator) and THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY (set in real Botswana, with a female protagonist my own age). Or perhaps not: I was hooked by the first part of the book, which intimately depicts Chanda's experience planning and attending her sister's funeral and tells the heartbreaking history of her family, but I felt betrayed by the Spielbergian climax and ending.
This is a well-written and absorbing book that I just didn't end up liking very much. I was excited to read it, because I have been seeking out fiction set in Africa and did not yet have young adult books on my radar, and my expectations were probably way too high. The same narration that may well appeal to many readers did not work for me: I wanted a wider view of Chanda's world, with less inner monologue. (THE HUNGER GAMES irked me for the same reason.) I also wish the author had set the story in a real place and adopted a more authentic style of language. Perhaps I would be less fussy if my reading had not come on the heels of THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN (set in real towns near Spokane, with an utterly convincing adolescent narrator) and THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY (set in real Botswana, with a female protagonist my own age). Or perhaps not: I was hooked by the first part of the book, which intimately depicts Chanda's experience planning and attending her sister's funeral and tells the heartbreaking history of her family, but I felt betrayed by the Spielbergian climax and ending.