A review by oceansky
The Furrows by Namwali Serpell

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.”