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A review by archytas
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
challenging
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
" Don’t tell me God is watching. Cos all my wretched life he’s been watching; how long, really, does a God need to watch shit burn before he intervenes?"
Glory is riotous, savvy, inspiring, cleansingly infuriating, fun. Bulawayo has given us a wild fable, obviously after George Orwell (or probably, according to Wifedom, Eileen Orwell), but without Orwell's misery and depression. Instead, she serves up blisteringly joyful humour, the kind of blazing fury that calls to action, and unapologetic celebration of acts of resistance and those of compassion.
Bulawayo writes long sentences with a cadance which can be funny or poignant, and always demands to be read aloud. She makes an artform out of overstatement: "Next, the Old Horse surveyed the packed throngs in the square. They weren’t just his subjects, they were bona fide supporters who’d stood with him and by him over the decades, with many of them going as far back as during the struggle for Jidada’s Independence. They’d been loyal then and had stayed loyal and were still loyal and would always and forever be loyal. They died loyal and took that loyalty to the grave so that even their ghosts, too, were loyal. They left behind offspring who were born already loyal."
Bulawayo lampoons the military, the government, and the clergy, but also keeps a firm eye on colonialism and the way it constructs the limited options and even more limited resources available. She deploys some of the sharpest satire for this aim, with sections that could have been ripped from social media, and a delicious turn of phrase, that includes describing the deposed leader as a "miserable cheap cell phone on the last 2 percent of its power".
And then, as the best funny writers do, Bulawayo can turn around and touch your heart. This is especially true in the threads following Destiny, a young female goat who returns after years in exile, and explores the all-too-real history of trauma. Bulawayo treats these passages with tenderness, as if cradling the hurts of an entire country, starting as she cannot leave the airport: "tholukuthi she’d remained there, standing with her luggage and weeping, until at last, a service worker recognised in the goat’s tragic posture, in the sound of her harrowing weeping, the specific lament of a returnee broken in specific ways by her country of broken things, went to her and gently, gently, tholukuthi so, so gently she could have been disarming a bomb, took the handle of her suitcase and set the piece on that red earth there, and then next took the backpack and set it down too, and then gently, again gently, so gently the goat almost didn’t feel it, took her in her arms and held her until she finished emptying the torrent of return."
Destiny's passages also become tributes to resistance, to bearing witness and to refusing to become part of the myth.
My spouse got the benefit - or the cost, depending on your perspective - of my insistence on reading much of this out loud. Every time, I would point out to him, that I know this story ends badly, but without giving too much away, Bulawayo also takes a very different tack here from Orwell. She dares to write a new ending for her country, one that celebrates the gorgeous cacophony of different voices. This is such a glorious read - and one with a much more grounded Glory.
Glory is riotous, savvy, inspiring, cleansingly infuriating, fun. Bulawayo has given us a wild fable, obviously after George Orwell (or probably, according to Wifedom, Eileen Orwell), but without Orwell's misery and depression. Instead, she serves up blisteringly joyful humour, the kind of blazing fury that calls to action, and unapologetic celebration of acts of resistance and those of compassion.
Bulawayo writes long sentences with a cadance which can be funny or poignant, and always demands to be read aloud. She makes an artform out of overstatement: "Next, the Old Horse surveyed the packed throngs in the square. They weren’t just his subjects, they were bona fide supporters who’d stood with him and by him over the decades, with many of them going as far back as during the struggle for Jidada’s Independence. They’d been loyal then and had stayed loyal and were still loyal and would always and forever be loyal. They died loyal and took that loyalty to the grave so that even their ghosts, too, were loyal. They left behind offspring who were born already loyal."
Bulawayo lampoons the military, the government, and the clergy, but also keeps a firm eye on colonialism and the way it constructs the limited options and even more limited resources available. She deploys some of the sharpest satire for this aim, with sections that could have been ripped from social media, and a delicious turn of phrase, that includes describing the deposed leader as a "miserable cheap cell phone on the last 2 percent of its power".
And then, as the best funny writers do, Bulawayo can turn around and touch your heart. This is especially true in the threads following Destiny, a young female goat who returns after years in exile, and explores the all-too-real history of trauma. Bulawayo treats these passages with tenderness, as if cradling the hurts of an entire country, starting as she cannot leave the airport: "tholukuthi she’d remained there, standing with her luggage and weeping, until at last, a service worker recognised in the goat’s tragic posture, in the sound of her harrowing weeping, the specific lament of a returnee broken in specific ways by her country of broken things, went to her and gently, gently, tholukuthi so, so gently she could have been disarming a bomb, took the handle of her suitcase and set the piece on that red earth there, and then next took the backpack and set it down too, and then gently, again gently, so gently the goat almost didn’t feel it, took her in her arms and held her until she finished emptying the torrent of return."
Destiny's passages also become tributes to resistance, to bearing witness and to refusing to become part of the myth.
My spouse got the benefit - or the cost, depending on your perspective - of my insistence on reading much of this out loud. Every time, I would point out to him, that I know this story ends badly, but without giving too much away, Bulawayo also takes a very different tack here from Orwell. She dares to write a new ending for her country, one that celebrates the gorgeous cacophony of different voices. This is such a glorious read - and one with a much more grounded Glory.