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shelleyanderson4127 's review for:
This Mournable Body
by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Tambudzai is in the capital city of Harare. Her money is running dangerously low; though college educated, she cannot find work, and when the book opens she is on the verge of being evicted from a young women's hostel. She berates herself for giving up her cushy job in advertising, which she did out of principle: the white males at work took all the credit for her work.
Welcome to Zimbabwe of the 1990s, where disaffected war veterans are taking over white farmlands; where water and electricity can be sporadic in the cities and unknown in the villages, where corruption and violence are ever possible tensions. The book creates this edgy tension as Tambudzai herself edges towards a breakdown. Yet she, and all the women in the book, keep fighting to survive. Readers (including myself) who loved Dangarembga's debut classic Nervous Conditions will be glad to see the return of Tambu and her cousin Nyasha, two women who seek very different futures both for themselves and their country.
Though Tambu is an anti-hero, I really enjoyed this novel, which is honest in its depictions of both wealth and poverty, female ambition and competition, tradition and modernity. It is also honest about the mental illness these tensions produce. Technically it is the third in a trilogy, which began with the wonderful Nervous Conditions, continues with The Book of Not (which I did not enjoy) and culminates in this book. This is a multi-layered story which tackles many issues, never losing sight of the human beings caught up in a history they did not make, and a future they need to struggle for.
Welcome to Zimbabwe of the 1990s, where disaffected war veterans are taking over white farmlands; where water and electricity can be sporadic in the cities and unknown in the villages, where corruption and violence are ever possible tensions. The book creates this edgy tension as Tambudzai herself edges towards a breakdown. Yet she, and all the women in the book, keep fighting to survive. Readers (including myself) who loved Dangarembga's debut classic Nervous Conditions will be glad to see the return of Tambu and her cousin Nyasha, two women who seek very different futures both for themselves and their country.
Though Tambu is an anti-hero, I really enjoyed this novel, which is honest in its depictions of both wealth and poverty, female ambition and competition, tradition and modernity. It is also honest about the mental illness these tensions produce. Technically it is the third in a trilogy, which began with the wonderful Nervous Conditions, continues with The Book of Not (which I did not enjoy) and culminates in this book. This is a multi-layered story which tackles many issues, never losing sight of the human beings caught up in a history they did not make, and a future they need to struggle for.