A review by ruthiella
The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto

1.0

I don’t know if it was the fantastical elements such as a boy learning how to read and write with nothing more than a pack of playing cards and the labels on crates of weapons or the quasi-poetical language such as “We never really get to live during most of our life. We waste ourselves in a boundless lethargy that we delude and console ourselves by calling it existence.”, but this book made no sense to me. Plus, there total nonsense like, “This is what these black women have that we can never have: they are always their whole body. They live in every part of their body. Their whole body is woman, their time is feminine. While we white women live in a strange state of transhumance: sometimes we are soul other times we are body. We aspire to soar on the wings of desire, only to then crash to the ground under the weight of our guilt.” What? I am equally pissed off for all black and white women everywhere. It’s not you Mia Couto, it’s me.