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ashpresto 's review for:
Dream Count
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Can I say outright that this book is good? No. Can I say outright that this book is bad? It's complicated.
Adichie returns with much fanfare and hype, now as a celebrity novelist more than a postcolonial writer. It's disappointing.
I went into this book thinking mostly of HoaYS (her best work IMO), Purple Hibiscus (her second best work IMO), and Americanah (her best-selling work), never mind the short stories and manifestos which I have all read but actually fell flat.
In this book Adichie falls into the mainstream talking points of gender in her book, sounding more like a social media influencer (no offense) than a critical novelist. Much of the book is platitude and hamfisted feminism, which is okay, but not when you expected a comeback of a critical race feminist scholar because that was what the book industry was hyping. I should have known better. What returned was a different Adichie, now less afraid of exploring complicated themes of gender (queer love in a conservative context, anyone?), but more comfortable in reopening wounds and trauma for display without explicating its nuances (a housekeeper is assaulted, but she'd rather not talk about it), and now less astute (men are all trash, no matter the race, all bad) but with more assertions (you can be ultra rich and super naive and be an absolutely adorable person without touching some grass). And most of all, now failing to deliver explorations of simple questions, like: how does class matter when 3/4 protagonists are ultra-wealthy women?
Adichie returns with much fanfare and hype, now as a celebrity novelist more than a postcolonial writer. It's disappointing.
I went into this book thinking mostly of HoaYS (her best work IMO), Purple Hibiscus (her second best work IMO), and Americanah (her best-selling work), never mind the short stories and manifestos which I have all read but actually fell flat.
In this book Adichie falls into the mainstream talking points of gender in her book, sounding more like a social media influencer (no offense) than a critical novelist. Much of the book is platitude and hamfisted feminism, which is okay, but not when you expected a comeback of a critical race feminist scholar because that was what the book industry was hyping. I should have known better. What returned was a different Adichie, now less afraid of exploring complicated themes of gender (queer love in a conservative context, anyone?), but more comfortable in reopening wounds and trauma for display without explicating its nuances (a housekeeper is assaulted, but she'd rather not talk about it), and now less astute (men are all trash, no matter the race, all bad) but with more assertions (you can be ultra rich and super naive and be an absolutely adorable person without touching some grass). And most of all, now failing to deliver explorations of simple questions, like: how does class matter when 3/4 protagonists are ultra-wealthy women?