Week 12
A better week for reading! My sister and her husband visited again, and it’s just always so much fun. We don’t do much, we just sit around and read and watch TV and go for walks, but doing it with people you love is great. I had dinner & coffee with my friends, and revelled in the joy of no longer having to catch up. Hello, weekly plans! As my brain lets go of December’s anxiety, I feel myself turning back to things to fill my weeks again.
This is a post publishing note - I also watched the season finale of Severance. Insane show.
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I won’t go on, as usual, about how much I love Adichie’s writing. Dream Count is the story of 4 women, all interlinked in different ways to each other’s lives. There’s Chiamaka, a hopeless romantic, dreamy and untethered. There’s Zikora, her best friend, who so deeply wants a child but suffers for it. There’s Kadiatou, a woman who suffers loss after loss, only to finally one day gain. And finally, there’s Omalagor, Chiamaka’s cousin, harsh, dazzling and caught between Nigeria and America.
I really enjoyed reading this. It’s always a treat for my brain to read something by Adichie, and this was no exception. Kadiatou’s story shone through for me as the most compelling. To me, she is at the centre of this book, a reminder that a loss is not always a loss.
Beautiful!
Rating: ★★★★★
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
My sister dropped into my room a few days ago and said ‘I have a book about ISIS brides. I thought of you.’ And she’s right, because I will read anything I can about the women of ISIS. (Thank you Azadeh Moaveni).
Fundamentally is about Nadia, a British aspotate, who travels to Iraq (escaping her ex) to begin a deradicalisation programme for ISIS women. She learns quickly that the women of ISIS are similar to her, that they are women of circumstance, the product of grooming. That they miss their homes, their mothers, their children. Simple things like rollerskating in the park. Nadia learns the uselessness of beauracracy, international politics and the corruption rife as she tries to help these women. And she starts to go just a little too far.
I enjoyed this book but found the secondary characters fell flat. They felt like caricatures of real people, flimsy and weightless. The only secondary character that I thought carried any weight was Sherri. I felt angry at Nadia’s naivety; her anger at other people for their western views, only to do the exact same and approach no situation with the nuance it required. I enjoyed the book for challenging what I think are most people’s beliefs. But for me, to make this book a 4 star novel, it required better writing, characters that were fleshed out and not caricatures of their stereotypes. I needed jsomething more with a little less Gen Z humour.
Rating: ★★★☆☆