Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Book: 37
Title: Purple Hibiscus
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Genre: Fiction
One-sentence summary: In the frightening political chaos of modern-day Nigeria, fifteen-year-old Kambili finds herself torn between the need to please her abusive and religiously fanatical father and her growing desire to find her own voice, encouraged by her independent-minded aunt and a magnetic young parish priest.
Why did you get this book? I'd read a short story by Adichie in This Is Not Chick Lit and decided I had to read more by her.
Do you like the cover? Yeah, it draws the eye.
Did you enjoy the book? I did, although it picked up steam as it went on. At first I thought the portrayal of the dynamics of an abusive home seemed a little facile, but it stopped seeming so as I went on. I do think that "facile" is a good word for a few things she did in the book - at the beginning of the book Kambili was so utterly controlled by her father, but she started to be able to abandon those thought patterns in something like a week spent with her aunt, which I found to be unrealistic given how abusive her father was. That would have been easily fixed by expanding the time frame a bit, though, and the characterization and the family dynamics were well handled. It also got me interested in learning more about the current political situation in Nigeria, and anything that gets me interested in learning something new is a good thing in my book.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? The only thing I'd read before was the short story. Half of a Yellow Sun looks really good and I will almost certainly get it from the library soon.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Another library book, and another one I may get my own copy of.
Anything else? Not really, except that I bet I'll recommend this book to a lot of people.
Number of pages: 320
Total pages for the year: 11017
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9
Title: Purple Hibiscus
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Genre: Fiction
One-sentence summary: In the frightening political chaos of modern-day Nigeria, fifteen-year-old Kambili finds herself torn between the need to please her abusive and religiously fanatical father and her growing desire to find her own voice, encouraged by her independent-minded aunt and a magnetic young parish priest.
Why did you get this book? I'd read a short story by Adichie in This Is Not Chick Lit and decided I had to read more by her.
Do you like the cover? Yeah, it draws the eye.
Did you enjoy the book? I did, although it picked up steam as it went on. At first I thought the portrayal of the dynamics of an abusive home seemed a little facile, but it stopped seeming so as I went on. I do think that "facile" is a good word for a few things she did in the book - at the beginning of the book Kambili was so utterly controlled by her father, but she started to be able to abandon those thought patterns in something like a week spent with her aunt, which I found to be unrealistic given how abusive her father was. That would have been easily fixed by expanding the time frame a bit, though, and the characterization and the family dynamics were well handled. It also got me interested in learning more about the current political situation in Nigeria, and anything that gets me interested in learning something new is a good thing in my book.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? The only thing I'd read before was the short story. Half of a Yellow Sun looks really good and I will almost certainly get it from the library soon.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Another library book, and another one I may get my own copy of.
Anything else? Not really, except that I bet I'll recommend this book to a lot of people.
Number of pages: 320
Total pages for the year: 11017
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9
