raconteur reviewed on + 168 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I do think it's good that this book is so popular. Maybe it will bring more awareness to what is going on in terms of oil in undeveloped countries. Although this book is fiction, the atrocities it describes are quite real.
However, I had a lot of problems with this book. For one thing, there was this big lead up to "the event." This was pointless - I guessed what had happened (it wasn't difficult) by Chapter two. Second, the author repeats himself a lot. What can be said in 3 sentences, he says in 12. I suppose this was his way of building the suspense some more. However, like I said, it wasn't hard to guess what had happened.
Finally, I didn't feel as if I was hearing this story from a Nigerian woman. I felt very distant from the narrator - two women actually narrate it, but I felt most distant from the Nigerian woman. So, I got to researching the author. While the author is a journalist, he is a white man living in a developed country. Exactly what kind of personal knowledge and experience could a white man have when it comes to Africans? Most especially, African women? He has no personal experience with that, and this showed in the book. No matter how much research this man did, the fact remains is that, as a white male, he does not face what a Nigerian village woman does. He has no clue what that feels like. As I said, this was more than apparent in the novel.
My concern, also, is the author's motivation for writing such a novel. At first, I assumed it was because he wanted to bring more awareness to the developed world as to what happens in places like Nigeria. However, if that is the case, he had an entire pointless subplot within the novel that completely detracted from the very Serious issues at hand. I couldn't help but think that this author was using what happens in Nigeria to add sensationalism to his novel.
I only hope that this book inspires people to actually find novels by actual Nigerian authors - yes, they exist! So, I hope, at the very least, people will be encouraged to read Nigerian authors, buy their books, and hopefully make the publishing industry aware that people can read books by actual Nigerian authors.
However, I had a lot of problems with this book. For one thing, there was this big lead up to "the event." This was pointless - I guessed what had happened (it wasn't difficult) by Chapter two. Second, the author repeats himself a lot. What can be said in 3 sentences, he says in 12. I suppose this was his way of building the suspense some more. However, like I said, it wasn't hard to guess what had happened.
Finally, I didn't feel as if I was hearing this story from a Nigerian woman. I felt very distant from the narrator - two women actually narrate it, but I felt most distant from the Nigerian woman. So, I got to researching the author. While the author is a journalist, he is a white man living in a developed country. Exactly what kind of personal knowledge and experience could a white man have when it comes to Africans? Most especially, African women? He has no personal experience with that, and this showed in the book. No matter how much research this man did, the fact remains is that, as a white male, he does not face what a Nigerian village woman does. He has no clue what that feels like. As I said, this was more than apparent in the novel.
My concern, also, is the author's motivation for writing such a novel. At first, I assumed it was because he wanted to bring more awareness to the developed world as to what happens in places like Nigeria. However, if that is the case, he had an entire pointless subplot within the novel that completely detracted from the very Serious issues at hand. I couldn't help but think that this author was using what happens in Nigeria to add sensationalism to his novel.
I only hope that this book inspires people to actually find novels by actual Nigerian authors - yes, they exist! So, I hope, at the very least, people will be encouraged to read Nigerian authors, buy their books, and hopefully make the publishing industry aware that people can read books by actual Nigerian authors.
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