Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My Rating: 4.8

Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating. As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. 

The tension in the house is so palpable it comes off of the pages of the book.This is a very uncomfortable read but so well written. It makes you understand life in Nigeria, growing up with physical abuse and family. So many beautiful layers are captured.

The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Dare

My Rating: 3.7

Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice”—the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni's father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir. From there, things go from bad to worse until she has a 'fairy godmother' intercede on her behalf.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I felt that the broken English style varied between endearing to grating but, worse it was inconsistent. There were times when Adunni could barely string together a complete sentence with her broken English and times when she was down right poetic. I have heard/seen her story of a poor girl wanting to get an education while her parents were wanting to marry her off many times. That was all this book offered except the fairy godmother who swooped in to help rescue her. With the writing being somewhat grating and inconsistent and nothing more to the plot, I may be in the minority saying that, this will not be for everyone.

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My Sister The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

My Rating: 4.4

Twin sisters, Korede and Ayoola. Korede is a nurse and is always there for Ayoola who is stunningly beautiful and has a habit of killing her boyfriends. Korede sides with her sister as she is family. It is only when her sister starts dating a doctor at the hospital that Korede has a crush on that she considers turning in her sister for the protection of the men in Nigeria.

I loved the Nigerian voice of this book and capturing so many colloquialisms. I don't know what I was expecting from the ending but felt disappointed. All in all, a quick delightful read. 

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My rating:  4.7

Ifemelu leaves Nigeria and her boyfriend Obinze, for life in America and discovers 'race' for the first time.  She starts a blog about 'race' and all of her perceptions in America.  More than all of this though, this book is about love.  A VERY good read.  I will be checking out more books by Adichie.

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In 1939, the ripple effects of Hitler take root in South Africa with the seeds of apartheid. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives heroic dreams–which are nothing compared to what life actually has in store for him. He embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives, and the power of one.

Last time I read the abridged version and really enjoyed that. This full-length book felt long but, it was very enjoyable due to the fabulous narration but definitely too long. Also, my book club pointed out how EVERYTHING went Peekay's way and, this gets old pretty quickly. Still, a well told story but I would recommend the abridged version.

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the most recent winner of Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Award for fiction about the Rwanda Genocide. It is told from the perspective of, Jean Patrick Nkuba, a gifted Tutsi boy who dreams of becoming Rwanda's first Olympic medal winner in track. This book captures the horrors of what happened as well as capturing the culture.

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Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a sweeping, emotionally riveting novel that follows the family from Africa to America. Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers growing up in a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, they are raised by Gosh and Hema. This book masterfully weaves in medicine as well as the story of the Ethiopian revolution. Even more enjoyable for reading this a second time. Loved it!

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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

This is about a white African girl's childhood.  Born in England and now living in Wyoming, Fuller was conceived and bred on African soil during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979), a world where children over five "learn[ed] how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill." With a unique and subtle sensitivity to racial issues, Fuller describes her parents' racism and the wartime relationships between blacks and whites through a child's watchful eyes. Curfews and war, mosquitoes, land mines, ambushes and "an abundance of leopards" are the stuff of this childhood. "Dad has to go out into the bush... and find terrorists and fight them"; Mum saves the family from an Egyptian spitting cobra; they both fight "to keep one country in Africa white-run."  Fuller describes her African childhood in detail, from the death of her sibling to playing in the wild and it makes for an engrossing read as she brings Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to life.

Rating: 3.7 Good

Agaat by Marlene VanNiekerk

This is about two women—one white and one black—living on a farm in South Africa at a time when the nation is undergoing huge racial and social change.  Milla, the elderly white woman, is paralyzed and dying.  Agaat, the younger black woman, is taking care of her.  They have their own personal history between them. The story shifts back and forth from the present to the past, and from first person to third person, including long, rambling diary passages (with no punctuation, weird abbreviations, references to unknown people and generally hard to follow), all from Milla’s perspective, to tell a tangled story that takes place during the years 1947–96. Trust as you read, that this will all weave together and make sense.  The author weaves it so well that you understand the close bond that the two women share.  There is incredible humor and understanding that these two women share.  Despite Milla being unable to do anything except blink her eyes, she and Agaat communicate and understand each other so well.  This is not an easy book to read (I skimmed a lot) and is too long but, very well written.

Rating: 3 Good

The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

I had so many friends recommend this book to me my only question is, why didn't I listen and read it sooner?! The book begins when a five-year-old boy is being sent off to boarding school. He's small for his age, white and of English descent. His name is Peekay and he lives in South Africa. Up to this point in his life he's known only his family and his beloved black Nanny. Now, he's forced to take care of himself and survive under the most brutal of circumstances. The time is World War II and Peekay spends years in a boarding school where he's the only English student among Afrikaners who are sympathetic to the Nazi cause. He's beaten, tortured and treated as a "prisoner of war" by the older boys. The Afrikaners are the descendents of the Dutch and there has been a great deal of conflict between them and the English settlers who came to South Africa at a later period of time.

When I first started reading this novel, I wasn't sure if I could handle the passages about the brutal treatment of this sweet little boy. However, I quickly learned that Peekay is a spirited survivor and would make it through that horrible period of his life. He battles through adversity and every challenge and refuses to let it dampen his will to accomplish his ultimate goal. First with the head and then with the heart...!!  On his vacations from school, he meets several people, both black and white who really influence him and teach him to work hard in order to fulfill his dreams.

After leaving boarding school, Peekay encounters a man who teaches him about some of the essentials of what he believed was the power of one, and from this man (a Boer) he discovers his love of boxing, which became his obsession, becoming Welterweight Champion of the World became his goal and his life. This is just the idea behind the power of one, and the introduction of the story. From there, the book tells about the many people Peekay encounters throughout his life and the influence they had upon him and what he believed was the power of one. But what struck me was really how beautifully written the novel is and the way it combines wit, humor, drama, and the everyday troubles of life, and still manages to get its message across and entertain the reader. You also can feel the tenderness that so many people feel for this boy.  Just an absolutely incredible novel that sets across a striking vision of South Africa before and during the terror that was Apartheid.  I found an uplifting joy in every success that Peekay experienced and couldn't wait to get back to this gem of a book.  Absoloodle.

Rating: 4.5 Recommend

Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese

There is a reason that I picked this book as the first book to start my recently founded Book Club.  It is spectacular and I wanted to set the bar high for all future reads.  In a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brothers long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Vergheses weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel.

Rating: 5 Definite Recommend!

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

I normally like to know a high level plot before I start reading a book.  With this one, the publishers of Chris Cleave's new novel "don't want to spoil" the story by revealing too much about it, and there's good reason not to tell too much about the plot's pivot point. All you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm. But she shows us the infinite rifts in a globalized world, where any distance can be crossed in a day--with the right papers--and "no one likes each other, but everyone likes U2." Where you have to give up the safety you'd assumed as your birthright if you decide to save the girl gazing at you through razor wire, left to the wolves of a failing state.

Rating: 5 Definite Recommend

Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill

Rating: 4.9 Definite Recommend

Stunning, wrenching and inspiring, the fourth novel by Canadian novelist Hill (Any Known Blood) spans the life of Aminata Diallo, born in Bayo, West Africa, in 1745. The novel opens in 1802, as Aminata is wooed in London to the cause of British abolitionists, and begins reflecting on her life. Kidnapped at the age of 11 by British slavers, Aminata survives the Middle Passage and is reunited in South Carolina with Chekura, a boy from a village near hers. Her story gets entwined with his, and with those of her owners: nasty indigo producer Robinson Appleby and, later, Jewish duty inspector Solomon Lindo. 

During her long life of struggle, she does what she can to free herself and others from slavery, including learning to read and teaching others to, and befriending anyone who can help her, black or white. Hill handles the pacing and tension masterfully, particularly during the beginnings of the American revolution, when the British promise to free Blacks who fight for the British: Aminata's related, eventful travels to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone follow. In depicting a woman who survives history's most trying conditions through force of intelligence and personality, Hill's book is a harrowing, breathtaking tour de force.