anetq's review against another edition
2.0
The thing about this book is; I'm bored. The bickering of the younger siblings, the going off to school, getting picked up at school, eating with the family, a summer in the country... Nothing is happening, and frankly I don't really care about the characters. Besides the book being bookended by the disappearance of the older brother, and the explanation (20 pages before the end) it's all just glimpses of (rather boring) everyday stuff. Maybe one is supposed to feel something significant about boys growing up from this, I don't know. And the vague history lesson of Nigeria and the fighting the oil companies after the Biafra war, well it still doesn't make up for this story having no plot what so ever... Maybe if that had been the focus of the story, it'd have been interesting? It does get 2 stars for decent writing.
zyzah's review against another edition
3.0
Although I found the story a little slow, I loved it for its interesting plot. Childhood, Family, Siblings, Political violence, .... and how a single calamity can break everything right in our faces.
I kept loosing the sense of time in the book, I didn't know the time at a point, I was trying to place every scene to a time, which happened first? I felt like the story wasn't well arranged đ˘đ˘.
"And After Many Days" has a very interesting plot, and you sure will connect with more than half of the things that happened in the book.
I kept loosing the sense of time in the book, I didn't know the time at a point, I was trying to place every scene to a time, which happened first? I felt like the story wasn't well arranged đ˘đ˘.
"And After Many Days" has a very interesting plot, and you sure will connect with more than half of the things that happened in the book.
bookly_reads's review against another edition
5.0
Paul turned away from the window and said he needed to go out at once to the next compound to see his friend.
I donât like books with clunky first sentences. I donât like contemporary realistic books about disappearances and grieving families. Because of this, I donât know why I picked up And After Many Days.
But by page 6 I knew I was in it until the end.
Yes: Paul, the oldest and most-beloved of three siblings, leaves his Nigerian home one day and doesnât come back. Cue the sobbing; cue the screaming; cue the hyperbolic prose in face of a heart-slashing tragedy.
Or letâs try this:
â[The Utu family] sat in the parlor until long after midnight. Twice the lights went out, but no one moved[.] ⌠The silence was so sudden and pure, it seemed as if the clock on the parlor wall had come to life, the slender second hand scraping its halting way around like a cripple.â
When I read this whole paragraph â several sentences longer than the excerpt above â my throat tightened and my stomach flipped. Jowhor Ile never writes âgrief,â âsadness,â or âworry.â He doesnât depict the individual reactions of mother, father, sister, brother. Theyâre a family waiting up for the son who should have come home hours ago; their hope and fear is too intermingled and too delicate to verbalize. They all sit in silence and, in depicting that silence, Ile makes every emotion felt without describing one.
And then the tension wavers and releases. We go back in time, learning about the wealthy Utu family and their community. Ma is well-educated, ambitious, fiercely loving and strict. The father is equally intelligent, a respected and moralistic local judge. There is Bibi, the ferocious and adorable little sister; Ajie, our often-narrator so overshadowed by his brother; Paul, a lead student and named after the apostle.
I was touched by the flashbacks of Bibi, Ajie, and Paul as children because it brought back my own past â I had forgotten how intense every small interaction seems to a child, and how quickly playdates devolve into fisticuffs and screaming.
Ajieâs days are full of swimming in the local swamp and mirroring his brother, but as he grows up his community changes: The government decides to put oil pipes down in their village. Here Ile links environmental ruin with a communityâs unraveling. To the corrupt government, neither land nor the citizens on the land may be permitted to block the path to profit. The old ways of communal values and collective discourse turn into government-fueled anarchy and carnal.
There is the old, there is the new. Both cannot survive.
Draw yourself a straight line, walk backward on it to erase your footsteps, and you will trip and crack your skull. Straddle the two sides of a stream and you will unhinge your hips. Be unstable as water and you will not excel.
Ile deals with violence frankly and honestly but gently. Rather than saying that women are raped, for example, he says they are âtaken by force.â This does not distort the meaning; it does not soften the blow. But it refuses to dramatize or tantalize. When students are beaten by the police, Ile says so. He focuses not on the blood and gore but on the pain of it, the pain of beaten bones and heartbroken parents. He never cheaply titillates the reader. The story is rich for it.
So what exactly happens to Paul? If you read the book, you will find out. Ile gives closure. While reading I was afraid the book would have an ambivalent ending: Oo0o0o0oh, this is literary fiction, so you donât get a spelled-out ending. Ile tries no such trick; he treats the Utu family and the reader with respect. The words resonate. (SPOILER AHEAD SPOILER AHEAD SPOILER AHEAD) Ile offers us one of the best funeral scenes Iâve read, the prose simultaneously as understated and full of feeling as it was on page 6.
The dead will not be consoled; neither will those who live in the skin of their dead.
And After Many Days explores how years of love, education, and bonding cannot undo the consequences of a split-second act of violence. Years of life cannot cancel out death.
Several minutes after finishing this book, I went on Goodreads and rated it. I turned on my phone and received a message. A friend of many years â in his twenties â died a few hours ago. His memorial service is on Sunday.
I donât like books with clunky first sentences. I donât like contemporary realistic books about disappearances and grieving families. Because of this, I donât know why I picked up And After Many Days.
But by page 6 I knew I was in it until the end.
Yes: Paul, the oldest and most-beloved of three siblings, leaves his Nigerian home one day and doesnât come back. Cue the sobbing; cue the screaming; cue the hyperbolic prose in face of a heart-slashing tragedy.
Or letâs try this:
â[The Utu family] sat in the parlor until long after midnight. Twice the lights went out, but no one moved[.] ⌠The silence was so sudden and pure, it seemed as if the clock on the parlor wall had come to life, the slender second hand scraping its halting way around like a cripple.â
When I read this whole paragraph â several sentences longer than the excerpt above â my throat tightened and my stomach flipped. Jowhor Ile never writes âgrief,â âsadness,â or âworry.â He doesnât depict the individual reactions of mother, father, sister, brother. Theyâre a family waiting up for the son who should have come home hours ago; their hope and fear is too intermingled and too delicate to verbalize. They all sit in silence and, in depicting that silence, Ile makes every emotion felt without describing one.
And then the tension wavers and releases. We go back in time, learning about the wealthy Utu family and their community. Ma is well-educated, ambitious, fiercely loving and strict. The father is equally intelligent, a respected and moralistic local judge. There is Bibi, the ferocious and adorable little sister; Ajie, our often-narrator so overshadowed by his brother; Paul, a lead student and named after the apostle.
I was touched by the flashbacks of Bibi, Ajie, and Paul as children because it brought back my own past â I had forgotten how intense every small interaction seems to a child, and how quickly playdates devolve into fisticuffs and screaming.
Ajieâs days are full of swimming in the local swamp and mirroring his brother, but as he grows up his community changes: The government decides to put oil pipes down in their village. Here Ile links environmental ruin with a communityâs unraveling. To the corrupt government, neither land nor the citizens on the land may be permitted to block the path to profit. The old ways of communal values and collective discourse turn into government-fueled anarchy and carnal.
There is the old, there is the new. Both cannot survive.
Draw yourself a straight line, walk backward on it to erase your footsteps, and you will trip and crack your skull. Straddle the two sides of a stream and you will unhinge your hips. Be unstable as water and you will not excel.
Ile deals with violence frankly and honestly but gently. Rather than saying that women are raped, for example, he says they are âtaken by force.â This does not distort the meaning; it does not soften the blow. But it refuses to dramatize or tantalize. When students are beaten by the police, Ile says so. He focuses not on the blood and gore but on the pain of it, the pain of beaten bones and heartbroken parents. He never cheaply titillates the reader. The story is rich for it.
So what exactly happens to Paul? If you read the book, you will find out. Ile gives closure. While reading I was afraid the book would have an ambivalent ending: Oo0o0o0oh, this is literary fiction, so you donât get a spelled-out ending. Ile tries no such trick; he treats the Utu family and the reader with respect. The words resonate. (SPOILER AHEAD SPOILER AHEAD SPOILER AHEAD) Ile offers us one of the best funeral scenes Iâve read, the prose simultaneously as understated and full of feeling as it was on page 6.
The dead will not be consoled; neither will those who live in the skin of their dead.
And After Many Days explores how years of love, education, and bonding cannot undo the consequences of a split-second act of violence. Years of life cannot cancel out death.
Several minutes after finishing this book, I went on Goodreads and rated it. I turned on my phone and received a message. A friend of many years â in his twenties â died a few hours ago. His memorial service is on Sunday.
lizmart88's review against another edition
3.0
If there's a theme to this book it's the futility of life and also the beauty of randomness.
The story centers around two parents and their three children - Paul, Bibi, and Ajie living in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. They are like many other families. The children have squabbles and fights. They adore their father but sometimes push back. They are living an ordinary life.
In the first chapter, told from Ajie's pov, you learn that one day, Paul, on the cusp of going to college, leaves the house and doesn't return. The story shifts back and forth as Ajie remembers their life and searches for meaning in his disappearance, and answers.
It's beautifully written. Not terribly much happens, but it's an honest portrait of a family. The children's petty squabbles but also adoration for their older brother Paul felt so real, I felt like I knew them.
The story centers around two parents and their three children - Paul, Bibi, and Ajie living in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. They are like many other families. The children have squabbles and fights. They adore their father but sometimes push back. They are living an ordinary life.
In the first chapter, told from Ajie's pov, you learn that one day, Paul, on the cusp of going to college, leaves the house and doesn't return. The story shifts back and forth as Ajie remembers their life and searches for meaning in his disappearance, and answers.
It's beautifully written. Not terribly much happens, but it's an honest portrait of a family. The children's petty squabbles but also adoration for their older brother Paul felt so real, I felt like I knew them.
caitlincook918's review against another edition
4.0
I received this book through Goodreads giveaways. Quite a good story about a Nigerian family set against a backdrop of political turmoil and the knowledge that the eldest son disappears one day. Ile's subdued but poignant writing style perfectly sets up the family's history and illustrates their everyday lives. The story moves back and forth in time, sometimes so much so that it was difficult to determine when an event was happening. Also, despite the book blurb, the majority of the story is focused on the family prior to Paul's disappearance. I would have liked to see in more detail how the family coped after he went missing. Overall, though, I enjoyed this book.
michelline81's review against another edition
5.0
I'll admit it took me a while to like this book, to get it. The silent desperation of waiting, the fact that life goes on when there is something suspended like that, like you can't quite breathe and have to keep forcing yourself to do so. Once I got this, it was a non-stop kind of read.
I recommend it.
I recommend it.
leighkhoopes's review
4.0
I received a free advance copy as part of the FirstReads program, and I'm so glad I did. This is a sad but lovely look at family we don't often get to see in America, and it paints a portrait of love, community, and colonialism that is too real to be dismissed. This is the Nigeria that no one tells you about, the bustling city with professors and politicians and students and siblings and meddling family members that could be any restless part of the world. The connection among the central family members in this story is one of the strongest I've seen in modern literature and the portraits of this family are so honestâit's one of those books that will stay with you a long time.
lautreamont's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
schomj's review
Not bad, but I kept waiting for some magical realism to happen. I don't read a lot of straight fiction, so not going to rate this because I have nothing against the book it's just not for me.
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