A review by black_girl_reading
House of Stone by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma

4.0

This book, about a young man’s deranged pursuit of a family of his own, tells a Zimbabwean story that is so important, and so timely with the Mugabe chapter of their history having so recently come to a close. The protagonist, a child of the Gurkahundi massacre, uses any means necessary to obtain the family denied to him by the brutality of the regime. Sounds good right? It was. Eventually. But it took the first half of the book, and some very stilted writing, to begin to tell the trauma story that binds the characters in this dark relationship of lies and fear and blackmail and death and force. The build up was so much, not in suspense, but in wandering into the story, that I almost left the book to read something else. I’m glad in the end that I stuck it out, and I’m excited to see more Zimbabwean literature available in the global world, but i wish that editing had helped to deliver a novel that showed itself more consistently from beginning to end. Thank you Netgalley for the ARC, opinions are my own.