Scan barcode
A review by lwb
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
3.0
Received this book as a Goodreads/Publisher 'give-away'.
This massive tome seems to me to try too hard to do too much, without achieving anything beyond demonstrating the author's potential. Nominally a history of three generations of women as Zambia moves from colonial times to near future. Each of the women are profoundly wounded in real and surreal ways - one grows hair body-wide continuously, one cries continuously, etc. Men appear only as shallow cartoon characters - one is a colonial usurper of women, the next deserts the pregnant wife, etc. The tome is massive and I found myself willing it to end, but with all that I could not help be a little awed by the scope of the work.
This massive tome seems to me to try too hard to do too much, without achieving anything beyond demonstrating the author's potential. Nominally a history of three generations of women as Zambia moves from colonial times to near future. Each of the women are profoundly wounded in real and surreal ways - one grows hair body-wide continuously, one cries continuously, etc. Men appear only as shallow cartoon characters - one is a colonial usurper of women, the next deserts the pregnant wife, etc. The tome is massive and I found myself willing it to end, but with all that I could not help be a little awed by the scope of the work.