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graywacke 's review for:
An Orchestra of Minorities
by Chigozie Obioma
(My first on the 2019 Booker lists)
I was taken in early. Chinonso, a young Nigerian chicken farmer, sees a young woman looking over the edge of a bridge. He stops his truck, grabs a couple chickens, runs over to the woman and tells her not to jump, and, to illustrate why not, tosses his two chickens over. Then he drives off. We're left wondering about this young man who seems so gallant and cruel at the same time, and the odd and innocent way he created some kind of intimacy out of nothing of the sort. We we're left wondering what happened to the women. We're slowly told through Chinonso's Chi, a kind of Igbo guardian spirit. The Chi can read some of Chinonso's thoughts, and can mildly influence them, but the Chi itself has been around a long time, dealt with a number of Nigeria lives, and learned many things, and it can see the world around Chinonso in ways he can't. The Chi can even leave Chinonso and explore the world on its own. But it's not all-knowing and cannot see the future and cannot control Chinonso. Instead it becomes an observer and, as a our narrator, a nimble tool for a writer.
Over the long trend of the novel, this becomes a variation of the Odyssey-Aeneid-Divine Comedy theme of travel and other-worldly travels. Maybe there's some Milton too. But on the immediate page, we are in the midst of one the of the several worlds Obioma has created with his pen, each with its own overall atmosphere, tensions, feeling and so on, and we experience them slowly, our draw dependent on the storyteller's skill. It's not a book anyone could write. But Obioma has some mastery in telling these stories, and then in completely changing things, building another world without losing his reader. I do wonder at the role the reader, Chukwudi Iwuji, played in this experience. He reads the book with a strong Nigerian accent, and gives the Nigerian Pidgin English an accent and stress I never could have imagined just reading the text, changing fundamental emphases within the dialogue.
I guess what I'm saying is I loved the paradise Obioma creates and I loved the way he sets up the ending to this paradise, and all the ways he goes about it. We can sense a lot of problems over the edge, but we never know what it's going to be like when we get there and or how it will turn out, and I never lost interest. Fun book, especially on audio.
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43. An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma
reader: Chukwudi Iwuji
published: 2019
format: 18:08 audible audiobook (464 pages in hardcover)
acquired: Aug 13
listened: Aug 14 – Sep 15
rating: 4
I was taken in early. Chinonso, a young Nigerian chicken farmer, sees a young woman looking over the edge of a bridge. He stops his truck, grabs a couple chickens, runs over to the woman and tells her not to jump, and, to illustrate why not, tosses his two chickens over. Then he drives off. We're left wondering about this young man who seems so gallant and cruel at the same time, and the odd and innocent way he created some kind of intimacy out of nothing of the sort. We we're left wondering what happened to the women. We're slowly told through Chinonso's Chi, a kind of Igbo guardian spirit. The Chi can read some of Chinonso's thoughts, and can mildly influence them, but the Chi itself has been around a long time, dealt with a number of Nigeria lives, and learned many things, and it can see the world around Chinonso in ways he can't. The Chi can even leave Chinonso and explore the world on its own. But it's not all-knowing and cannot see the future and cannot control Chinonso. Instead it becomes an observer and, as a our narrator, a nimble tool for a writer.
Over the long trend of the novel, this becomes a variation of the Odyssey-Aeneid-Divine Comedy theme of travel and other-worldly travels. Maybe there's some Milton too. But on the immediate page, we are in the midst of one the of the several worlds Obioma has created with his pen, each with its own overall atmosphere, tensions, feeling and so on, and we experience them slowly, our draw dependent on the storyteller's skill. It's not a book anyone could write. But Obioma has some mastery in telling these stories, and then in completely changing things, building another world without losing his reader. I do wonder at the role the reader, Chukwudi Iwuji, played in this experience. He reads the book with a strong Nigerian accent, and gives the Nigerian Pidgin English an accent and stress I never could have imagined just reading the text, changing fundamental emphases within the dialogue.
I guess what I'm saying is I loved the paradise Obioma creates and I loved the way he sets up the ending to this paradise, and all the ways he goes about it. We can sense a lot of problems over the edge, but we never know what it's going to be like when we get there and or how it will turn out, and I never lost interest. Fun book, especially on audio.
-----------------------------------------------
43. An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma
reader: Chukwudi Iwuji
published: 2019
format: 18:08 audible audiobook (464 pages in hardcover)
acquired: Aug 13
listened: Aug 14 – Sep 15
rating: 4