Reviews

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

Only show reviews with written explanations

juliezucchini's review against another edition

4.5

Lots of beautiful language in this book. Every time it felt like something was going over my head, I reminded myself to cling to her opening, “I don’t want to tell you what happened, I want to tell you how it felt.”

auspicait's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

***This is NOT a spoiler free review. Do not read if you don’t want spoilers.****

To me this book felt like 2 different books put together. The first half was a very fascinating dive into the mind of the unstable main character after the drowning death of her brother and the subsequent breakdown of her family.

The MC retells the story of his death over and over again changing parts of it, so one time he’s hit by a car, another he falls, etc but no matter what he dies. I was 100% engaged for the first half.

But even when I was really enjoying it. There were some parts of the book that I noticed and wondered where the author was going with it. Unfortunately all of the things I noticed were literally never addressed again.

For example there is some really weird race stuff that is set up but not really addressed. The mom is white and the dad is black. The mom is an artist who only paints pregnant black women???? And it’s implied that she only makes “black” art for a lack of a better term. (It’s literally never addressed again in any meaningful way, the MC does make a throwaway comment about it, but that’s all)

There’s hints that some strange man rescued the children but no one can find proof of it. Is this man real? Was he a hallucination? Is the MC lying? These questions are brought up as if they will be important somehow…

There is hints that the sister left the brother for dead and went home in a daze not realizing he could have been saved. That if she had gotten help he could have been saved and so it literally is her fault. I thought maybe we were going to go somewhere really dark with the story and really lean into grief and guilt…

Unfortunately, all of this will go nowhere.
There are even more examples but these are what I could remember off the top of my head. None of these things will ever be addressed. All these tantalizing hints of something else, all these threads, will just be ignored and never addressed.

Then there is this weird sexual attraction undercurrent that I couldn’t figure out where the author was going with it. The MC keeps meeting her dead brother in different situations… are they hallucinations? Is she crazy is he a ghost? Idk

But in a large portion of the meetings she meets a man who she is sexually attracted to and they flirt and then all of sudden he introduces himself as her brother and then everything explodes a la inception style.

I am continuously confused by the men she is sexually attracted to turning into her brother. I keep rereading to see if I missed something, I haven’t.

There is a lot of weird sexual attraction stuff that I do not understand. A boy she has a crush on in high school calls her house and says he wants to rape her. She fantasizes about it. They literally have no other interactions.

She spends most of the book talking about being attracted to every man the novel has her interact with.

I thought that the author was going somewhere with this, maybe how sexual attraction and guilt were all tied together for the MC… once again this is never addressed in any meaningful way.

Then the 2nd half of the book starts.

She meets a man, he has the same name as her brother, there is a terrible explosion a la inception style and they survive. This is the only time the book addresses the aftermath of the huge disaster. They go to the hospital.

They go to his hotel and have sex. He turns into her brother for a second and she says stop. He doesn’t.

In the middle of the chapter with no warning the book switches to the man’s POV. Like literally. One paragraph is her voice, she says stop, the next is his. 3 pages later the chapter ends and book 2 starts. At no point earlier in the novel does any other POV happen.

I was so confused I checked multiple times because I thought there must have been a print issue and it was supposed to be a new chapter. As far as I can tell it wasn’t.

Well I was very curious and interested in the first half of the book, I hated the second half.

He is a homeless criminal who has the same name as her brother and has purposely hunted her and her family down because he thinks the brother was torturing him.

He tells his backstory, he will be interacting with someone and then the person will morph into the brother of the MC and according to the story he kills at least 1 person and the other times beats the person half to death. Like in the first half of the book, it’s hinted that this might be a haunting, or maybe the brother actually survived and met this guy. Or maybe the man is hallucinating. Don’t worry, none of that will ever go anywhere.

The man and the MC keep hanging out and having sex. He steals from her, he has a fake credit card and ID. He follows her to her grandmas funeral. Taking the airplane and staying in the hotel with her. At the funeral he confronts her father and everyone is disturbed that he introduces himself with the dead brothers name.

After returning from the funeral woman tells her white mom about this man who is following her around who says his name is the same as the dead brother.

In response to this, the mom 100% logically calls the cops on him. The book treats this as crazy out of pocket racism, instead of the correct thing to do when a strange man who claims to have the extract same name as your dead son starts showing up and bugging your family. Which is bat shit insane.

Like you want to make an example of racism? This was not a good example. Especially because this man is a murderer who is 100% actually stalking your family for revenge. Like the mom is correct, he is dangerous.

Anyways, the man runs from the cops, the cops tase him. The MC cuts off her mom and pays the medical builds for the man. And then they go off together as an implied couple.

I finished the book and went what the fuck did I just read?

Everyone was like it’s a touching portrait of grief blah blah blah, I’m pretty sure they didn’t fucking finish it.

They never address the weird haunting of the brother to the same named guy. They never address any of the things they hinted at in the first book.

They frame the white mother as a racism piece of shit for calling the cops on an “innocent” black man.

A man who 100% was stalking the daughter. A man who lies and steals from her. A man who doesn’t stop fucking her when she says stop. A man who is actively manipulating a woman who is not mentally well. A man who has a very extensive history of violence and murder?! Who was using the daughter to find the son so he could get revenge on him.

The book ended and literally threw it across the room in disgust.

I rated it 2 stars.

The first half of the book, I was willing to give 4 stars. I was engaged I was curious, I devoured it. I was so excited to read and see what was going to happen with all of these hints and ideas and where the author was going with it.

The second half, I hated every single moment of it. All of the poignancy, all of the beauty and portrait of grief- gone. Literally nothing that was building from the first half carried into the second.

I do not understand how this book made so many lists (it was on Obama’s favorite books of the year?!?!?)

I would not suggest this to anyone. Unless they wanted to read the first half knowing that there would be no payout in the end.

mluce789's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

oceansky's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

This lyrical novel is at times a ghost story, a family drama, and a love story. “I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt,” the narrator begins before she slowly unspools the story of her little brother’s tragic death during her childhood and its lasting impact into her adulthood. Her prose is so beautiful I found myself stopping to reread certain sentences to properly admire them. You can perfectly feel the numbness she’s seeking when she writes about spending an afternoon “wrapped inside a quilt of sit-coms, the same commercials stitching them together.”