A review by flykites
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

All you have to do is watch a child ride her bike directly into a brick wall or jump from the tallest branch of sycamore tree to know that we humans are reckless with our bodies, reckless with our lives, for no other reason than that we want to know what would happen, what it might feel like to brush up against death, to run right up to the edge of our lives, which is, in some ways, to live fully.

<Spoiler>
I enjoyed this book when I could read it for long sweeping spells but I felt ill invested at such pivotal parts. I think the passage of the novel in.which gifty recalls her brother's addiction and now we went from being this pro basketball player with all the opportunities to a man riddled with addiction, how isolated her family felt.in that moment, how people who praised him and his ability on the court suddenly could not care less and tied his rumoured drug addiction down to the fact he was black and not a whole other crisis in itself is so harrowingly done but the novel relied too much on flashbacks of memory that it was taking me out of the story and not showing me enough of gifty in other moments.
</Spoiler>
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