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A review by kitsqueak225
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
2.0
A friend of mine borrowed this book before I could finish reading it and gave it back exclaiming that it was the coolest book she had ever read. So, curious, I forced myself to speed through the book.
I could only give this book 3/5. I'm not sure what bothered me about this book. Maybe it was the fact that the book is actually two different chapters of the same person's life - Part 1 sees Darling, a young African girl living a life of want and hunger in the slums, and Part 2 sees Darling as a teenager living in comfort and relative luxury in America. Both these people do not seem the same; the first part of the story does not seem to inform the second part. Or maybe it's the fact that the country she comes from was never once named (we only know that it is Zimbabwe from inference). Or maybe it's the fact that the America that Darling dreams of in the slums is actually the America she lives at age 14, and the disconnect she feels with her motherland later is the disconnect anyone who moves away would feel, regardless of race or circumstances. She is an illegal immigrant, but that is not explored much in the second half.
All in all, this seemed like a good first attempt at a novel, but the wide, yawning, disconnected incidents, the telling and not showing, made me want to put this book down in the second half.
I could only give this book 3/5. I'm not sure what bothered me about this book. Maybe it was the fact that the book is actually two different chapters of the same person's life - Part 1 sees Darling, a young African girl living a life of want and hunger in the slums, and Part 2 sees Darling as a teenager living in comfort and relative luxury in America. Both these people do not seem the same; the first part of the story does not seem to inform the second part. Or maybe it's the fact that the country she comes from was never once named (we only know that it is Zimbabwe from inference). Or maybe it's the fact that the America that Darling dreams of in the slums is actually the America she lives at age 14, and the disconnect she feels with her motherland later is the disconnect anyone who moves away would feel, regardless of race or circumstances. She is an illegal immigrant, but that is not explored much in the second half.
All in all, this seemed like a good first attempt at a novel, but the wide, yawning, disconnected incidents, the telling and not showing, made me want to put this book down in the second half.