zeddee's review against another edition
2.0
This won the Arthur C. Clarke Award so I approached it as science-fiction. But the science part of the science-fiction only starts being obvious about 65% of the way through. Before that point, it reminded me of magical realism, with strange things happening like a character that is constantly crying.
Structurally, I read this as a series of interconnected novellas, each one focusing on a particular character. They start off in the distant past and slowly progress to the near-future. I found the first one the weakest of the bunch and I barely made it through reading it. The main character of the prologue doesn't do anything and everything is described in a very distant manner.
I found most of the other stories to be just a little better but I didn't care about most of the characters. The only parts I enjoyed was the childhood of the hairball character and after the 65% mark when some science is introduced. It was a chore to read through the rest.
I can understand why it won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and what the author was trying to accomplish, telling an interconnected story that spans generations, but it fell flat for me as I didn't care about more than half the book.
I don't think I'm the audience for this kind of novel or this style of writing.
Structurally, I read this as a series of interconnected novellas, each one focusing on a particular character. They start off in the distant past and slowly progress to the near-future. I found the first one the weakest of the bunch and I barely made it through reading it. The main character of the prologue doesn't do anything and everything is described in a very distant manner.
I found most of the other stories to be just a little better but I didn't care about most of the characters. The only parts I enjoyed was the childhood of the hairball character and after the 65% mark when some science is introduced. It was a chore to read through the rest.
I can understand why it won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and what the author was trying to accomplish, telling an interconnected story that spans generations, but it fell flat for me as I didn't care about more than half the book.
I don't think I'm the audience for this kind of novel or this style of writing.
patroclusbro's review against another edition
challenging
informative
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Your desire to conquer, to colonise others, is both too fixed and too free. Nothing escapes your dull dialectic: either it takes a village to live or to each his own to survive. Even your debate on the best way to be falls on either side of this blade. The social contract or individual free will; the walls of a commune must keep us close or capital must run rampant. That's how you froze your long Cold War, with this endless, mindless divide.
I am a little torn on how I liked this book. Right from the beginning it is obvious just how much of a wide scope of topics, people and decades this story wants to cover; it is incredibly ambitious in that, and full of purpose. There were a lot of characters that I fell for, and that I wanted to learn more about. Namwali Serpell's view on the entanglements of nature, (de)colonialism, technology, health, education and family excited me with its layers.
That being said, I had issues with its structure and how it impacted the storytelling: focusing on a different character each chapter, while following more or less of a chronological path from the early 20th to the early 21st century, the red line got lost a little. Especially in the last third I struggled with confusion and trying to see how it was connected to the rest of the book (apart from the very ending). But since I had the same issue (the anthology structure standing in the way of a big, overall narrational point) with Eloghosa Osunde's "Vagabonds!" and Hanya Yanagihara's "To Paradise", it might just be my personal taste.
Also while, in the end, Zambia was basically the main character, I left wanting to know more of its specifics. All in all; craving more grit, maybe some reducing of text, because unfortunately I think this book had more in it.
Read this one with patience, and stay on the lookout for all the tiny little punches that Serpell's writing creates!
I am a little torn on how I liked this book. Right from the beginning it is obvious just how much of a wide scope of topics, people and decades this story wants to cover; it is incredibly ambitious in that, and full of purpose. There were a lot of characters that I fell for, and that I wanted to learn more about. Namwali Serpell's view on the entanglements of nature, (de)colonialism, technology, health, education and family excited me with its layers.
That being said, I had issues with its structure and how it impacted the storytelling: focusing on a different character each chapter, while following more or less of a chronological path from the early 20th to the early 21st century, the red line got lost a little. Especially in the last third I struggled with confusion and trying to see how it was connected to the rest of the book (apart from the very ending). But since I had the same issue (the anthology structure standing in the way of a big, overall narrational point) with Eloghosa Osunde's "Vagabonds!" and Hanya Yanagihara's "To Paradise", it might just be my personal taste.
Also while, in the end, Zambia was basically the main character, I left wanting to know more of its specifics. All in all; craving more grit, maybe some reducing of text, because unfortunately I think this book had more in it.
Read this one with patience, and stay on the lookout for all the tiny little punches that Serpell's writing creates!
moosalamoo_rnnr's review against another edition
5.0
IпїЅпїЅпїЅm not entirely sure what kind of book this is, or why it caught my attention so, or how I feel about the ending, but I donпїЅпїЅпїЅt regret reading it. It certainly is like no other book I have
awebofstories's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
vivacissimx's review against another edition
5.0
This was an extensive book in every way - 500+ pages, three generations, 10+moving characters who all somehow intertwined by the end. So if you're going to read it please give it the time it deserves!
It tackles a LOT, starting at the "false start of the river" that Dr. Livingstone lived with and then continuing to a neighborhood in Zambia, which was such a poetic journey. A lot of this book is poetic, dizzyingly so, so that even when you feel lost or adrift you know the narrative will deliver you back...somewhere.
We see all of the characters as young people, and the majority of them we see a skip through many years until their older age. Missing that chunk allows us to understand each of them through their own eyes, with their goals, and then through the eyes of their descendants, as flawed and tired old folks. I had to give 5 stars simply because of the undertaking this novel was, a real accomplishment by the author.
It tackles a LOT, starting at the "false start of the river" that Dr. Livingstone lived with and then continuing to a neighborhood in Zambia, which was such a poetic journey. A lot of this book is poetic, dizzyingly so, so that even when you feel lost or adrift you know the narrative will deliver you back...somewhere.
We see all of the characters as young people, and the majority of them we see a skip through many years until their older age. Missing that chunk allows us to understand each of them through their own eyes, with their goals, and then through the eyes of their descendants, as flawed and tired old folks. I had to give 5 stars simply because of the undertaking this novel was, a real accomplishment by the author.
sasankajinadasa's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
geirertzgaard's review against another edition
5.0
På norsk heter det kraftanstrengelse, på engelsk det mer passende "Powerhouse" av en roman. Du verden, dette er eksepsjonelt god litteratur - en lang serie enkelthistorier, også utgitt som noveller over en tiårsperiode, en slektsroman med tre familier fra den første kolonialiseringen av Zambia og fram til oktober 2023, en krønike av den gode gamle sorten og helt nyskapende.
Noen ganger var jeg helt grepet, andre ganger skjønte jeg ikke et kvidder, men som en anmelder skrev: Hele romanen er som et puslespill med mange biter, og du ser ikke helheten før du er ferdig.
Ja, strukturen er enerverende og vanvittig, det samme kan sies om språket. Forfatteren skriver helt fantastisk, lett og utfordrende på samme tid.
Noen ganger var jeg helt grepet, andre ganger skjønte jeg ikke et kvidder, men som en anmelder skrev: Hele romanen er som et puslespill med mange biter, og du ser ikke helheten før du er ferdig.
Ja, strukturen er enerverende og vanvittig, det samme kan sies om språket. Forfatteren skriver helt fantastisk, lett og utfordrende på samme tid.
phillysaurus's review
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Very well written and great concept, but I just didn't enjoy reading it and didn't look forward to picking it up.
ielerol's review against another edition
4.0
Sprawling multi-generational family epics where nobody's really happy are mostly not my thing, and there were points where I wasn't sure I'd make it through this one, but I stuck with it and I'm glad I did. The first thing that helps is that the characters weren't privileged white Americans whose unhappiness is pretty much entirely the fault of their own bullshit. There's a little of that here (like, it would have been nice for even one person in this book to have had a happy and functional romantic relationship?), but so much more of it is the entire problem of colonial and post-colonial southern Africa. I liked the pieces of Zambian history woven into the story (look up Nkoloso and the real Zambian space program!) and the way the three families' stories kept intersecting in the background. It is a long, slow-moving book and I definitely enjoyed some sections better than others - in fact the main reason I wasn't sure I'd finish is because the intro from Percy Clark's perspective was incredibly unpleasant for me to listen to on audio, I felt like this odious asshole was invading my brain, and then Sibilla's childhood in Italy was so claustrophobic and unhappy that I had to take a lot of breaks, but the later sections were easier to get through - but on the whole I liked the slowness and the attention to language and setting.
mkesten's review against another edition
2.0
I must be getting cranky in old age and should cut down my reading of fiction. I generally ask so little of an author: take me to a world I haven’t been before and make me glad I came.
I can’t unequivocally say that about Namwali Serpell’s “The Old Drift.”
There is much to like and admire in Serpell’s saga about a family and the travails of the Zambian nation, but by the end of it there were too many question marks, magical sideshows, and wish fulfillment that I wasn’t entirely glad I came for the ride.
Moreover, the poverty and glumness of the human landscape were awfully trying.
There are certainly portraits of poverty, domestic violence, of philandering men, absconding fathers, and corrupt nations that ought to be read if not in this book, then some others. I acknowledge my need to upgrade my knowledge of Africa.
I’m not going to argue that colonialism wasn’t a plague on many of Africa’s nations, but this story doesn’t help me understand what is its long term meaning for African peoples. The Europeans were brutal to Africans. But Africans can be brutal to Africans and Europeans can be brutal to Europeans. So what else is new?
I found the novel episodic. I never understood the significance of the child with a hair growing disorder, and it took me a while to figure out why her mother’s employers were using her as amusement at decadent parties; and it took me even longer to realize the parties were in Italy and not Africa, where the novel opens.
Some of the sub-plots, for me anyway, are left hanging. A man murders his brother and steals his identity. That’s it. A clinic furthers the search for an AIDS vaccine. The clinic is surreptitiously burned to the ground. A doctor’s son continues his dad’s work but the reader is left wondering what happened to the work exactly.
A damn is constructed at the beginning of the book to deliver electricity to the extractive industries along the Zambezi River. Descendants of the originators of the dam return to it but exactly why is a little sketchy.
I didn’t quite get the climax, who wins and who loses. What exactly are people protesting: ancient history or the contemporary data-driven world we live in. I kinda think facebook and Google were the villains by the end of the book but even this is cloaked in innuendo.
There was something about the American-Chinese-international high tech conspiracy that left me a little confused. As if there were a new colonialism at work. The metaphor just didn’t hold water for me.
Because I am older I am looking for plausible behaviour in the characters. In this novel I find much of the behaviour as so obtuse I simple cannot identify with it on any level beyond that of juvenile, including that of the adults.
Not even if it were the most ingenious magical realism.
The acknowledgements at the end of the novel indicate a lot of writing workshops and mentors, but the novel was not ready for publication in my opinion.
I can’t unequivocally say that about Namwali Serpell’s “The Old Drift.”
There is much to like and admire in Serpell’s saga about a family and the travails of the Zambian nation, but by the end of it there were too many question marks, magical sideshows, and wish fulfillment that I wasn’t entirely glad I came for the ride.
Moreover, the poverty and glumness of the human landscape were awfully trying.
There are certainly portraits of poverty, domestic violence, of philandering men, absconding fathers, and corrupt nations that ought to be read if not in this book, then some others. I acknowledge my need to upgrade my knowledge of Africa.
I’m not going to argue that colonialism wasn’t a plague on many of Africa’s nations, but this story doesn’t help me understand what is its long term meaning for African peoples. The Europeans were brutal to Africans. But Africans can be brutal to Africans and Europeans can be brutal to Europeans. So what else is new?
I found the novel episodic. I never understood the significance of the child with a hair growing disorder, and it took me a while to figure out why her mother’s employers were using her as amusement at decadent parties; and it took me even longer to realize the parties were in Italy and not Africa, where the novel opens.
Some of the sub-plots, for me anyway, are left hanging. A man murders his brother and steals his identity. That’s it. A clinic furthers the search for an AIDS vaccine. The clinic is surreptitiously burned to the ground. A doctor’s son continues his dad’s work but the reader is left wondering what happened to the work exactly.
A damn is constructed at the beginning of the book to deliver electricity to the extractive industries along the Zambezi River. Descendants of the originators of the dam return to it but exactly why is a little sketchy.
I didn’t quite get the climax, who wins and who loses. What exactly are people protesting: ancient history or the contemporary data-driven world we live in. I kinda think facebook and Google were the villains by the end of the book but even this is cloaked in innuendo.
There was something about the American-Chinese-international high tech conspiracy that left me a little confused. As if there were a new colonialism at work. The metaphor just didn’t hold water for me.
Because I am older I am looking for plausible behaviour in the characters. In this novel I find much of the behaviour as so obtuse I simple cannot identify with it on any level beyond that of juvenile, including that of the adults.
Not even if it were the most ingenious magical realism.
The acknowledgements at the end of the novel indicate a lot of writing workshops and mentors, but the novel was not ready for publication in my opinion.