A review by ramskick
The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 
I am kind of at a loss at what to say about The Furrows.  I definitely like it and think Serpell is a daring, talented writer for pulling off what she did here, but I find myself struggling to put my emotions towards it into coherent sentences.  
 
Let’s start with a summary.  The Furrows starts off with a 12-year-old girl named Cassandra (Cee for short) on the day she sees her 7-year-old brother Wayne die.  She returns home and tells her parents what happened but her mother refuses to believe that Wayne is dead.  Based on that, you’d think that this is a straightforward tale about grief, but this is very much not that.  Through the rest of the first part we see Cee grow up and see Wayne in various people.  These appear to be grief-induced hallucinations until she meets a man named Wayne who bears a striking resemblance to her brother.  From here on out we see Cee and Wayne develop a relationship and find out that Wayne’s past is murky and involves a kid who looked just like him and had his same name.  I can’t possibly sum up the last part of the book in a way that does Serpell’s writing justice. 
 
As I said above, this is not a basic story of familial grief.  Instead, Serpell injects a lot of life into this tale, making it somewhat of a mystery novel as well as a romantic story.  She never loses sight of what is important as it always comes back to the day that Wayne died, but Serpell tells the story in such a way that it feels like an emotional ocean, with big waves of grief surrounding calm periods of levity.  This makes the book a really interesting read and I really like the choices Serpell made to continue to surprise the reader throughout. 
 
I don’t think I quite get everything that this book is trying to say but I do find myself interested in it all the same and that is something that I find very valuable in a novel.  Serpell is a genuine talent. 
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