A review by audreykerr
Girl, by Edna O'Brien
2.0
I didn't know what this book was about until I started it. It was one of those books that I was hearing enough hype about the back end of last year/early this year that I decided I'd read it, and it didn't matter what it was about. Well...if I knew it was a fictional story of the accumulation of told accounts from the schoolgirls in Chibok who were abducted by Boko Haram I probably would have passed.
It still feels too recent - students have just this past week sat exams for the first time in Chibok since the abduction, and more than 100 are still missing/being held. The references to Ireland in the book were just very weird, and felt there to remind you of the fact that the author is a white Irish woman, but they just felt unnatural to me. At least the first third of the book if not more is just a relentless telling of the horrors and atrocities against Maryam and the other girls. It's not something I want in a book, I don't gain anything but more disgust and sadness.
It still feels too recent - students have just this past week sat exams for the first time in Chibok since the abduction, and more than 100 are still missing/being held. The references to Ireland in the book were just very weird, and felt there to remind you of the fact that the author is a white Irish woman, but they just felt unnatural to me. At least the first third of the book if not more is just a relentless telling of the horrors and atrocities against Maryam and the other girls. It's not something I want in a book, I don't gain anything but more disgust and sadness.