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stevienlcf 's review for:
Three Strong Women
by Marie NDiaye
NDiaye presents three loosely linked novellas which don't seem to be about the "strong women" in the title. In the first story, Norah, a lawyer raised by her single mother in France, returns to Dakar at the behest of her wealthy, intimidating and cruel Senegalese father. Norah is summoned to defend her 35-year-old brother, Sony, who is in prison awaiting trial having been charged with murdering his father's latest wife when she broke off their affair. Norah, who has been separated from Sony since they were children and their father abducted and raised his son in Dakar, must defend him even if it means implicating their father for the crime. The second tale focuses on Rudy Descas, a 43-year-old former school teacher who is convinced that Fanta, his beloved wife who he uprooted from her idyllic Dakar and took the French provinces, has drifted away because she is having an affair with his boss, the owner of an upscale customized kitchen business. As Rudy spends his day fretting that his colleagues know about Fanta's affair with the boss, and lamenting about his shoddy car and "sad little half-done-up house," the reader learns about the sinister events that drove Rudy from Senegal. The last of the stories follows the misfortunes of Khady Demba, whose gallant and devoted husband dies unexpectedly, leaving Khady at the mercy of his family who have no use for a widow who failed to conceive during the marriage and who lacks a means of support or a dowry. When she is kicked out of her in-laws' home with only enough money to seek out a distant cousin, Fanta, who married and lived in France, she joins the march of clandestine immigrants seeking to reach Europe.