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A review by liralen
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
3.0
It's the late 1970s in Rwanda, and the students at Our Lady of the Nile -- an elite girls' boarding school -- know to watch their step. The country is under majority rule, but unrest is everywhere; the minority ethnic group make easy scapegoats. Genocide is not yet here, and it will not be here for some time, not really. But everyone knows that it's only a matter of time.
It's an odd book, perhaps. Fascinating, though. For much of the book very little actually happens; instead it is all scene-setting and petty arguments. We watch Gloriosa, the undisputed queen bee of the school, wield her influence with cruelty and aplomb. We see the bumbling white people stumble through these girls' lives, some with better intentions than others.
In a way, this sloooow scene-setting and explosive climax is terribly (in both the 'very' sense and the 'it is a terrible thing' sense) fitting for the reality of the genocide: throughout the book, the reader knows what is coming for the girls in the long run. The girls know, if not exactly what to expect, that something is coming. People don't wake up one morning and decide spontaneously to commit genocide, and neither do the characters in this story go from ordinary, unworried schoolgirls to people caught up in warfare overnight.
I do wish that the story had relied more on fleshed-out scenes. A lot of the action was told through dialogue, after the fact, adding to the distanced feel of the story. There are also very few characters who we get to know well...one character dies at the end, but it is not as emotional a moment as it might be if she had been given more time to develop. Another is saved, and while we know her better, this is not a particularly emotional moment either. Was this intentional? I am not sure.
Other things:
-There's a certain derision for many (not all) of the white people in the book. "The Tutsi have already acted in white men's B movies, or in their craziness, you should say, and we suffered for it." (81) Then there's the unnamed 'white woman' who lives with gorillas, who inspires white people to care for gorillas more, it seems, than for Rwandans -- and who does not trust Rwandans to come near the gorillas (105). It's understood among the students that the white-person food the lycée mandates is really...not very good...and of course the white people in charge can't see that most of their students are always going to prefer the things they grew up with to (very unappetizing-sounding) foreign food. And then the witch doctor, who tells Virginia Don't tell those whites who want to know everything but who understand nothing. (149)
-And, of course, we mustn't forget Monsieur de Fontenaille, who doesn't seem to care whether the Tutsis live or die so long as he can live out his fantasies: "Even if the Tutsi were to disappear, I am the custodian of their legend. (161) I'm not even going to try to understand him. Or the detestable Father Herménéglide...
-The story is told almost entirely in the third person, except for a few lapses into first-person plural -- i.e., we. As though the narrator is someone at the lycée. Never quite figured out what to make of that.
-We see Virginia go home over the holidays and work with her mother in the fields. Her mother imagines all that might be done with Virginia's dowry...a brick house with a sheet-metal roof; mattresses; folding chairs instead of mats; a thermos to keep the tea warm (135). I don't want to put too much emphasis on the Hutu-this and Tutsi-that, but I don't think it's accidental that Virginia, a minority student, is far poorer than most of her classmates. And...I'm not sure if it's sadder that to her mother, those dreams (sheet-metal, folding chairs) seem like an incredible luxury, or that it seems unlikely that her daughter will rise as far as she hopes.
-Gloriosa. Cripes. She's...she's certainly something. Fearless. Shameless. An instigator. Definitely someone who might have benefitted from a little more depth...although I suppose that wasn't really the point here. Frightening to think how much havoc one person can wreak, though, given a lack of regard for others, and some manipulation, and power.
It's an odd book, perhaps. Fascinating, though. For much of the book very little actually happens; instead it is all scene-setting and petty arguments. We watch Gloriosa, the undisputed queen bee of the school, wield her influence with cruelty and aplomb. We see the bumbling white people stumble through these girls' lives, some with better intentions than others.
In a way, this sloooow scene-setting and explosive climax is terribly (in both the 'very' sense and the 'it is a terrible thing' sense) fitting for the reality of the genocide: throughout the book, the reader knows what is coming for the girls in the long run. The girls know, if not exactly what to expect, that something is coming. People don't wake up one morning and decide spontaneously to commit genocide, and neither do the characters in this story go from ordinary, unworried schoolgirls to people caught up in warfare overnight.
I do wish that the story had relied more on fleshed-out scenes. A lot of the action was told through dialogue, after the fact, adding to the distanced feel of the story. There are also very few characters who we get to know well...one character dies at the end, but it is not as emotional a moment as it might be if she had been given more time to develop. Another is saved, and while we know her better, this is not a particularly emotional moment either. Was this intentional? I am not sure.
Other things:
-There's a certain derision for many (not all) of the white people in the book. "The Tutsi have already acted in white men's B movies, or in their craziness, you should say, and we suffered for it." (81) Then there's the unnamed 'white woman' who lives with gorillas, who inspires white people to care for gorillas more, it seems, than for Rwandans -- and who does not trust Rwandans to come near the gorillas (105). It's understood among the students that the white-person food the lycée mandates is really...not very good...and of course the white people in charge can't see that most of their students are always going to prefer the things they grew up with to (very unappetizing-sounding) foreign food. And then the witch doctor, who tells Virginia Don't tell those whites who want to know everything but who understand nothing. (149)
-And, of course, we mustn't forget Monsieur de Fontenaille, who doesn't seem to care whether the Tutsis live or die so long as he can live out his fantasies: "Even if the Tutsi were to disappear, I am the custodian of their legend. (161) I'm not even going to try to understand him. Or the detestable Father Herménéglide...
-The story is told almost entirely in the third person, except for a few lapses into first-person plural -- i.e., we. As though the narrator is someone at the lycée. Never quite figured out what to make of that.
-We see Virginia go home over the holidays and work with her mother in the fields. Her mother imagines all that might be done with Virginia's dowry...a brick house with a sheet-metal roof; mattresses; folding chairs instead of mats; a thermos to keep the tea warm (135). I don't want to put too much emphasis on the Hutu-this and Tutsi-that, but I don't think it's accidental that Virginia, a minority student, is far poorer than most of her classmates. And...I'm not sure if it's sadder that to her mother, those dreams (sheet-metal, folding chairs) seem like an incredible luxury, or that it seems unlikely that her daughter will rise as far as she hopes.
-Gloriosa. Cripes. She's...she's certainly something. Fearless. Shameless. An instigator. Definitely someone who might have benefitted from a little more depth...although I suppose that wasn't really the point here. Frightening to think how much havoc one person can wreak, though, given a lack of regard for others, and some manipulation, and power.