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A review by mariahistryingtoread
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
3.0
TW: rape, sexual assualt, physical and verbal abuse
The Girl With The Louding Voice is pretty good, but I'm surprised by how much praise I've seen it get having now read it.
I am not trying to make myself out to be the supreme authority of good taste. If you enjoyed it or thought it life changing in some way then by all means feel that way. Who cares what I think, really. I’m only saying that I was expecting a lot more than I got by based on the tenor of the other reviews I’d seen.
Now that we've got the disclaimer out of the way - this book is just misery porn. To add insult to injury it's not even good misery porn.
I'm not above admitting that I read it partially for that reason. Books that take place in exceedingly poor areas that feature young women rising above unfathomable odds are a kind of escapism for me. I will never be in those circumstances and there's a sort of comfort that I find in watching these girls overcome those experiences. If they can do x, y then why can't I do z? It's also massively cathartic since the protagonist usually wins the scholarship or the big game or the ticket to another country or whatever the end goal is. After all that suffering there is guaranteed to be a light at the end of the tunnel which means a lot to a person like me who struggles to be positive even at the best of times.
It's a privilege to be able to view such hardship through this kind of lens, but therein lies the conundrum inherently embedded in misery porn: where's the line between exploiting suffering for personal gain and being an active contributor to that exploitation through consumption of that media vs a reader enjoying a well written work that happens to have tragic real world implications and the author simply wanting to tell the story they have in their heart. Most of the time, for better or worse, it ends up falling under 'I'll know it when I see it'.
All of that to say that I went into this book with certain expectations.
I can't tell if it's possible I've outgrown misery porn or if I wasn't in the mood to humor this specific book, but either way I found it pretty generic and bland. I don't mean to be dismissive of Adunni's struggles. I absolutely did feel for her and I was disgusted by what she had to endure. However, as I've read many different books that have similar set ups there was nothing special about this book to make it stand out one way or another on its own merits. A large chunk of the book is uneventful, Adunni's personal growth is very minimal, and the characters she encounters are fairly shallow caricatures of the age old characters you always see in these kinds of books. They exist as little more than props.
There is a 'mystery' - if you can even call it that - involving a former maid that Adunni becomes obsessed with. Except I couldn't care less because I could already guess what it was. I felt bad for the former maid, but that's only natural to feel bad for someone in her position. I understood why Adunni felt connected to her. Regardless, I couldn't care about it because I knew immediately what happened to her.
While Adunni is an ignorant girl due to her remote upbringing I have not been so sheltered, therefore, I could not relate to Adunni’s single-minded determination to root out the details. The details fundamentally didn’t matter. I suspect anyone reading this could easily figure it out because the only true obstacle was Adunni’s own naivete about the world. When you do find out what happened it isn’t revelatory since it’s exactly what you guessed it would be. Nothing and no one is changed by the outcome. Not even Adunni seeing as she made her peace beforehand.
I will say I liked the writing style as it reflected well on how a person, like Adunni, who hasn't had a lot of schooling would communicate their thoughts. I also liked how the character that is central to Adunni’s growth isn’t some unrealistically enlightened savior. This person was lucky enough to have opportunities that allowed them to be educated and educated outside of Nigeria as well. They were allowed to consider alternative perspectives that Adunni obviously could not. That being said, I found it interesting that this character was still much beholden to Nigerian custom despite their broadened horizons. I thought it was a great way of highlighting how strong cultural conditioning even in the face of your better judgment can be.
This isn’t to say Nigeria is lesser than in some way and that this character needed to eschew it entirely to embrace the superior Western conventions. I’m only pointing out that every country has values or traditions on a societal level that should be further examined if not abandoned outright, but it’s often so much easier said than done. I appreciated how this character embodied the cognitive dissonance.
Anyways, I enjoyed The Girl With the Louding Voice a fair amount which is why it’s three stars. An average read, not disappointing, not life shattering, mostly just there. Not a recommendation, but not a condemnation either.
The Girl With The Louding Voice is pretty good, but I'm surprised by how much praise I've seen it get having now read it.
I am not trying to make myself out to be the supreme authority of good taste. If you enjoyed it or thought it life changing in some way then by all means feel that way. Who cares what I think, really. I’m only saying that I was expecting a lot more than I got by based on the tenor of the other reviews I’d seen.
Now that we've got the disclaimer out of the way - this book is just misery porn. To add insult to injury it's not even good misery porn.
I'm not above admitting that I read it partially for that reason. Books that take place in exceedingly poor areas that feature young women rising above unfathomable odds are a kind of escapism for me. I will never be in those circumstances and there's a sort of comfort that I find in watching these girls overcome those experiences. If they can do x, y then why can't I do z? It's also massively cathartic since the protagonist usually wins the scholarship or the big game or the ticket to another country or whatever the end goal is. After all that suffering there is guaranteed to be a light at the end of the tunnel which means a lot to a person like me who struggles to be positive even at the best of times.
It's a privilege to be able to view such hardship through this kind of lens, but therein lies the conundrum inherently embedded in misery porn: where's the line between exploiting suffering for personal gain and being an active contributor to that exploitation through consumption of that media vs a reader enjoying a well written work that happens to have tragic real world implications and the author simply wanting to tell the story they have in their heart. Most of the time, for better or worse, it ends up falling under 'I'll know it when I see it'.
All of that to say that I went into this book with certain expectations.
I can't tell if it's possible I've outgrown misery porn or if I wasn't in the mood to humor this specific book, but either way I found it pretty generic and bland. I don't mean to be dismissive of Adunni's struggles. I absolutely did feel for her and I was disgusted by what she had to endure. However, as I've read many different books that have similar set ups there was nothing special about this book to make it stand out one way or another on its own merits. A large chunk of the book is uneventful, Adunni's personal growth is very minimal, and the characters she encounters are fairly shallow caricatures of the age old characters you always see in these kinds of books. They exist as little more than props.
There is a 'mystery' - if you can even call it that - involving a former maid that Adunni becomes obsessed with. Except I couldn't care less because I could already guess what it was. I felt bad for the former maid, but that's only natural to feel bad for someone in her position. I understood why Adunni felt connected to her. Regardless, I couldn't care about it because I knew immediately what happened to her.
While Adunni is an ignorant girl due to her remote upbringing I have not been so sheltered, therefore, I could not relate to Adunni’s single-minded determination to root out the details. The details fundamentally didn’t matter. I suspect anyone reading this could easily figure it out because the only true obstacle was Adunni’s own naivete about the world. When you do find out what happened it isn’t revelatory since it’s exactly what you guessed it would be. Nothing and no one is changed by the outcome. Not even Adunni seeing as she made her peace beforehand.
I will say I liked the writing style as it reflected well on how a person, like Adunni, who hasn't had a lot of schooling would communicate their thoughts. I also liked how the character that is central to Adunni’s growth isn’t some unrealistically enlightened savior. This person was lucky enough to have opportunities that allowed them to be educated and educated outside of Nigeria as well. They were allowed to consider alternative perspectives that Adunni obviously could not. That being said, I found it interesting that this character was still much beholden to Nigerian custom despite their broadened horizons. I thought it was a great way of highlighting how strong cultural conditioning even in the face of your better judgment can be.
This isn’t to say Nigeria is lesser than in some way and that this character needed to eschew it entirely to embrace the superior Western conventions. I’m only pointing out that every country has values or traditions on a societal level that should be further examined if not abandoned outright, but it’s often so much easier said than done. I appreciated how this character embodied the cognitive dissonance.
Anyways, I enjoyed The Girl With the Louding Voice a fair amount which is why it’s three stars. An average read, not disappointing, not life shattering, mostly just there. Not a recommendation, but not a condemnation either.