Book Review: Ama Ata Aidoo's Changes, A Love Story

How does a university-educated Ghanaian woman independent enough to divorce her first husband despite the objections of her traditional family wind up the second wife of a handsome philanderer?

Is it possible that the best way to really think about marriage is to approach it from a completely different perspective?

That perspective is the amazing gift of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story, a book that grabbed me from minute one, and still had me turning pages until the last one. Esi is a wealthy, educated civil servant who loves her job. Her husband, Oko, feels neglected by her devotion to duty. Their clashes eventually lead to the dissolution of their marriage, although Esi’s “Western” notions of autonomy find little support even among her staunchest allies – her grandmother, her mother and her best friend are all perplexed by her desire to leave a perfectly good man.

If her dissatisfaction with her marriage is based on imported Western values, her fascination with Ali, the well-to-do travel agent, is completely primeval: they are attracted to each other from the second they meet, and soon start a steamy affair. Ali is obsessed with Esi, so much so that he becomes jealous of her, despite the fact he is himself cheating on his own family. The fact that he’s already married is not an insurmountable problem to possessing Esi in Ghanaian society: Ali can make Esi his second wife.

And that’s the most fascinating issue in the book. Living in a traditional society with a host of non-traditional ideas, Esi starts to see the things a marriage provides to women: security, partnership, networking. These are the things that Western ideas about marriage, focused almost completely on love, tend to ignore. She also looks at the negative aspects of marriage for women, including their presumed subservience to men in traditional relationships. Is it possible to find the perfect balance of freedom and dependency in any marriage? Could being a second wife allow a woman to live a less conventional lifestyle while still operating within the comfortable framework of a traditional society? I certainly never thought about it before I read Changes, but I will admit that the novel really forced me to think about relationships in a completely unique way.

It’s probably obvious that I loved this novel, and I’m really grateful to have found it because of Judith’s Book Bloggers Abroad 2011 Challenge at Leeswammes! I would absolutely recommend this book to lovers of world fiction and feminist fiction, as well as those who are interested in African literature. But I really believe the book deserves a wider audience, as it speaks to the very essence of what makes society work. Aidoo writes beautifully and with great compassion – I will definitely seek out more of her work.

Audiobook Review: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Alexander McCall Smith’s sixth installment in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, has a wonderfully intimate feel. Each of the mysteries covered in this book is very personal to the characters that series fans have already come to know and love. The book starts with Mma Ramotswe attempting to foil a theft in the bizarre. Then there’s the mystery of the intruder in her house on Zebra Drive. And the question of the perfect pumpkin left on her porch. Most importantly, there’s the strange goings-on at Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s former residence – and the chance that they may have something to do with ladies’ man apprentice Charlie. As with all of the books in this series, the mysteries themselves are secondary to the human interactions and observations that lead to their resolutions.

Since the first book was published in 1998, McCall Smith has had plenty of time to develop the main characters, and their increasing complexity is indeed part of the charm of the book. We see Precious Ramotswe’s lingering self-doubt for the first time in the series. And we experience Grace Makutsi’s loneliness – after all, even if you can be justifiably proud of your astounding 97% result on the final examinations at the Botswana Secretarial College, you can’t cuddle up with it at night.

But McCall Smith isn’t letting things get dull in Gabarone. This book introduces two important male characters: Phuti Radiphuti, Mma Makutsi’s kind but clumsy dancing partner, and Mr. Polopetsi, a very honest man who paid a terrible price for someone else’s mistake, and is now trying to find work in an unforgiving city. As ever, I love the compassion with which McCall Smith treats his characters.

One of the reasons I chose this for what I knew would be a long car ride was because it was read, like the other books in this series, by South African narrator Lisette Lecat. Her beautifully accented reading evokes warm sunshine, African bush tea, and the slow but changing rhythm of life near the Kalahari Desert– probably because she grew up not far from Botswana. She is Precious Ramotswe to me. And Grace Makutsi. And Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. I can easily listen to her for hours, forgetting (or at least trying to forget) the demolition derby driving on the Capitol Beltway. Lecat’s range is outstanding. Each of the voices she creates is so distinctive that I no longer need the text to tell me who’s speaking. And unlike other readers’, I haven’t found any of her characterizations off-putting, even those of the minor or transitory ones.

These audiobooks have wide appeal, and because the themes are very traditional, and morality and culture are discussed often, they make a great choice for family listening. My husband and at least one daughter enjoy them as much as I do. Highly recommended for lovers of mysteries, lovers of fiction set in other countries, and people who love smart, compassionate, female protagonists.

This book wasn’t for any of my challenges, but I will be linking this review to Audiobook Jukebox, a great place to find audiobook reviews and recommendations. June was Audiobook Month, so I really wanted to get something linked over there before the end of the month!

Cutting for Stone finds beauty in the most horrifying places on earth

Abraham Verghese’s sensational Cutting for Stone is about destiny and finding your place in the world – about what is pre-determined, and what you can make happen on your own. The book follows the life of most unlikely twins Marion and Shiva Stone, their birth mother an Indian nun, their birth father a British surgeon, as they grow up in Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia. After the twins’ mother dies in childbirth, they are raised in Addis Ababa’s expatriate medical community by two Indian doctors, Hema and Ghosh.

“Sensational” is the exact word for this book, as Verghese offers insights into Marion and Shiva’s startling and visceral relationships with their seemingly star-crossed adoptive parents, their godmother who runs the hospital at which their parents worked, their panoply of family friends and helpers, their childhood playmate Genet, and finally and most importantly, each other. Even though they are born under the most horrible circumstances possible, the boys embrace their circumstances, proving that great love is possible whenever the right heart is willing. The author’s evocative writing, which is from the perspective of the older twin, Marion, allows us to experience the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and emotions of the boys’ world, but the narrative never comes to any conclusion about the world the boys “should” occupy – it is a book that radiates the current moment, even when it is relating the past.

One of the major themes in this novel is “belonging.” With whom do you fit in, and why? Is it community that makes a culture, or is it religion or is it geography? Midway through the novel, even though the twins are born in Ethiopia, and they speak Amharic fluently, Marion realizes that he is not seen as “Ethiopian,” but as an expatriate. Having realized how far out of the mainstream Addis Ababa is because of his late introduction to American rock and roll, Marion starts to rethink the romanticism of the expatriate life.

“I’d always thought the expatriates represented the best of culture and style of the 'civilized' world. But I could see now that they were so far from Broadway or the West End or La Scala, that they probably were a decade behind the times, just as I’d been with Chuck Berry.” (p. 314)

How far are you from your culture if you’ve never even seen it first hand? Can ancestors you’ve never met help determine the person you will become? Verghese examines the many reasons for leaving one's homeland, and the many reactions to those who already inhabit the places where immigrants land, from Africa to the Bronx.

This is a fascinating and beautifully written novel. I appreciated the complexity and enigmatic nature of the personalities portrayed in the book – there is neither good nor bad in these characters, only detail. In that sense, the novel resembles a medical chart, crammed with as much information, and as little bias, as possible. Not surprising as the author is a professor of medicine at Stanford. I loved the author’s ability to underscore the human predicament of even the most unlikeable characters. There is no “cartoonish” evil in this book – as in life, evil is subtle and situational.

Toward the end the book was a bit myopic – for example, there are many native born US American interns in New York City’s toughest hospitals, although the novel's characters categorically insist there are not. Clearly, Verghese is trying to make a case about the necessity of the educated immigrant class, but that case could have been made without the only stereotypes that inhabit the novel, the “high-and-mighty” American MDs. The rest of the book was so much more nuanced that I couldn’t help but be disappointed on that point.

Still, Cutting for Stone is a work of the first decade of the 21st century that no one who loves literature should miss. The author’s attention to detail and appreciation for other cultures is rare. The characters he creates are so real that I couldn’t help but wonder where they are now. I give this book an unqualified recommendation.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: Solving African mysteries, great and small

Botswana is suddenly on my Bucket List, and it’s all because of Precious Ramotswe.

I had already put Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency on my reading list for the R.I.P. V Challenge when Karen over at How Mysterious gave a great review to the second audio book in that series. With a trip to New Jersey looming, and a 1-book credit on audible.com burning a hole in my digital pocket, I decided to download the audio book.

Another great call, Karen.

Precious Ramotswe is a gatherer – a gatherer of people, a gatherer of skills and a gatherer of information. A non-traditional woman in a traditional but changing society, Mma Ramotswe takes her inheritance and puts her considerable deductive powers to work by opening Botswana’s first female owned and operated detective agency. As a new business owner, she takes almost any case that comes her way, from tracking down pampered pooches to exposing insurance cheats. She constructs each case as a puzzle, and she uses her knowledge of Botswana –culture, flora, fauna, history – to make the pieces of the puzzle fit.

I especially loved the idea of having Precious solve lots of different mysteries, rather than have the book dominated by one case: you got to know her and the supporting cast of characters better as you encounter both her successes and failures during her first months on the job. And there’s a good deal of humor to go along with the sleuthing, because Precious can both laugh at herself and laugh at the world.

This is a particularly engaging audio book. With Lisette Lecat’s African-accented narration, the story truly springs to life. I loved Lecat’s graceful pronunciation of the Setswanan names, and the changes in her voice that signaled different characters were consistent, clear and never cutesy. The only thing I might have wished for was some of the sounds of Botswana – fires crackling at a cattle station, traditional music drifting from a neighbor’s turntable, birds calling from the thorn bushes.

It’s been a long time since a book prompted me to think about traveling to some way-out destination, but I found myself trolling the Internet for photo safaris in Botswana when I got home from New Jersey today. That’s the transportational power of a good read in action.