A review by archytas
The Furrows by Namwali Serpell
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Serpell's The Old Drift was one of my favourite reads of 2021. It was full of energy and ideas, occasional dazzling prose. It felt funny, and provoking and, overstuffed and off-kilter. I really wanted to see what Serpell's second work would be like when she had that out of her system and would write something less wild. It didn't take long into the Furrows for me to realise that apparently, off-kilter, slightly overdone and absolutely overambitious is just where Serpell lives, and maybe I had just been a tad patronising in assuming otherwise. The Furrows is tonally a long way from the Old Drift, and yes, it is a tighter work. It is suffused with desperate grief, positioned in fractured memories and unclear truths. The first half of the book can be gruelling and painful, as through Cee we relive variations of a nightmare where we know the ending but not the journey. The second half, which starts, off-kilter, slightly early and unexpectedly, knocks the reader sideways. More conventionally structured as a narrative, it brings energy but even more questions.
The book is also about race: and it feels like an elegy for young Black manhood as well as a particular child. Cee moves betwixt and between the worlds of her White mother and grandmother and her Black father and grandmother. Serpell gets some biting critiques in: "To joke about race was to show how above it—how past it—you were. It was to defuse its offense in the name of a humor that nevertheless depended on that offense. And now I had broken the youthful pact, the one that swore that being edgy was better than being earnest. Worse, I had reminded them that I was not in fact one of them." The questions of trust, truth and memory loom large. Cee's name is Cassandra, and she was witness to things no-one can really believe. As she grows up, endlessly retelling her story to a parade of therapists, she is lost in a jaggad tangle of visions and memories, which is not to say she doesn't prove far more incisive than I expected.
Serpell's writing often swoops and dances, “All afternoon, all evening, I lay on the couch, wrapped inside a quilt of sitcoms, the same commercials stitching them together.” Her brother's absence "the drain toward which everything ran'". It also changes tone suddenly, that offkilter thing again. At times, I became convinced that we were dealing with an additional narrator. The plot is clever, and not as obtuse as the book makes you feel.
And, as Cee tells the reader over and over again, it is how it feels that matters. Not only in an empathy sense, but a truth one. With all the different variations of 'truth', the characters are clearly, often heartbreakingly drawn. The mother who draws pictures behind the furniture watches home videos ritually and creates a foundation around a version of the truth she finds comforting. The father, who takes his quiet patience and his resigned love and quietly builds a new, different life he can live with. Cee, a hot mess who isn't. When reading this book, I was initially disappointed: it certainly wasn't as fun as the Old Drift, and it is irritating frequently as well as gruelling. The showiness can be tiring. But by the end, I didn't want an end. And I have been able to think of little else since I finished it. And now I really can't wait to see what she writes next.
The book is also about race: and it feels like an elegy for young Black manhood as well as a particular child. Cee moves betwixt and between the worlds of her White mother and grandmother and her Black father and grandmother. Serpell gets some biting critiques in: "To joke about race was to show how above it—how past it—you were. It was to defuse its offense in the name of a humor that nevertheless depended on that offense. And now I had broken the youthful pact, the one that swore that being edgy was better than being earnest. Worse, I had reminded them that I was not in fact one of them." The questions of trust, truth and memory loom large. Cee's name is Cassandra, and she was witness to things no-one can really believe. As she grows up, endlessly retelling her story to a parade of therapists, she is lost in a jaggad tangle of visions and memories, which is not to say she doesn't prove far more incisive than I expected.
Serpell's writing often swoops and dances, “All afternoon, all evening, I lay on the couch, wrapped inside a quilt of sitcoms, the same commercials stitching them together.” Her brother's absence "the drain toward which everything ran'". It also changes tone suddenly, that offkilter thing again. At times, I became convinced that we were dealing with an additional narrator. The plot is clever, and not as obtuse as the book makes you feel.
And, as Cee tells the reader over and over again, it is how it feels that matters. Not only in an empathy sense, but a truth one. With all the different variations of 'truth', the characters are clearly, often heartbreakingly drawn. The mother who draws pictures behind the furniture watches home videos ritually and creates a foundation around a version of the truth she finds comforting. The father, who takes his quiet patience and his resigned love and quietly builds a new, different life he can live with. Cee, a hot mess who isn't. When reading this book, I was initially disappointed: it certainly wasn't as fun as the Old Drift, and it is irritating frequently as well as gruelling. The showiness can be tiring. But by the end, I didn't want an end. And I have been able to think of little else since I finished it. And now I really can't wait to see what she writes next.