A Taste of Italy With Anna Del Conte

This week, Critical Literature Review presents a review of the Random House published food memoir of Anna Del Conte. We hope that this whets your appetite for more. Enjoy! 

I must admit, for a foodie like myself, I still find a little enjoyment out of eating tinned, hoop spaghetti that I have warmed in the microwave. Call it harkening back to my childhood. Anna Del Conte, the world renowned food writer and author of the autobiography Risotto with Nettles would be ashamed of me. However, I can appreciate even more the merits that a fine bowl of handmade pasta with a rich tomato sauce can have. And, thanks to Del Conte, I am allowed to choose between my tinned shame and Italian magnificence. Because of Del Conte’s Italian food writing which emerged in the 70’s in Britain, Italian food—real Italian food, found its place in restaurants and home dinner tables alike. Gone were the days of canned, spongy ravioli. Del Conte’s first publication Portrait of Pasta (1976) opened up the doors, or indeed the kitchens, of the British public and made olive oil a household item.

I had read snippets of Del Conte’s books, on recommendations of other food writers. Her recipes were generally easy to follow and she would reveal an interesting history of her dishes that further intrigued me to cook them. I knew that she was extremely influential in Italian cooking, and indeed helped make Italian food in Britain as we know it today. But her memoir Risotto with Nettles, reveals what I did not know; the sheer strength, resolve, and stunning life of a woman who grew up in Milan during World War II, travelled to England as a young woman in a time when the suitable thing was to marry and settle down, and who experienced love, loss, and being torn between two worlds—all of which informed her recipes and her writing.

Anna Del Conte was born in Milan in 1925 to a prosperous family in an idyllic, pre-war time. It was here that she began her love affair with her native food, and developed the interest she would need to be such an immensely talented food writer. Each chapter has at least one (and sometimes two or three) recipes which seem to define a period or anecdote that has particularly influenced Del Conte’s life. You won’t find any of the clichéd Italian recipes here. With examples such as Spaghetti with Marmite, Elephants Turd, Boiled Meats Piedmontese Style, or an excellent recipe for Risotto with Lemon (one which I tried myself), Del Conte always has you captivated.

The instructions in the recipes themselves are sometimes a bit vague and she does not get specific enough for my precise cooking mind to handle. What temperature exactly should I put this on? Does it go in the oven? She doesn’t specify! However, do not let that deter you. If you want precise, buy a Jamie Oliver cookbook. But if you love learning about food, dream about sultry Italian holidays and are interested in the social history behind the dishes then this is the book for you. Even if you don’t, you will after reading this book.

      

What I found riveting about Del Conte’s memoir was the almost nonchalant way she writes about extraordinary events and circumstances. From getting shot at from overhead war planes, being chased and imprisoned by Nazi soldiers, losing all her worldly possessions and fleeing her home, repeated flagrant affairs outside of her marriage, and the death of her beloved husband after a marriage of more than fifty years, Del Conte writes it all with an understated elegance, absent of any sensationalized ‘tell all’ memoir.

As Del Conte grows older she travels to England as an Au Pair and finally meets the love of her life. It is in Britain where she decides to start a family and settle down, and so forever embark on the divided life on an expatriate. This also begins to cultivate her desire to bring true Italian food to the British gastronomy. She also so succinctly describes the life of an ex-pat that I think I fell completely in love with her when I read this section, “being neither English nor any longer Italian, always missing something when I am here or something else when I am there. Even now that I am old, I have the dilemma of where I should be buried: here in the lovely churchyard of this picturesque village in Dorset, where I now live, or in my family tomb in the grand Monumentale cemetery in Milan. Even dead I will not settle.” Being an ex-pat myself, I have never read something which so captured the feeling of the fractured existence of choosing to live in a place which is not your own.

Del Conte ends the memoir with a touching and moving dedication—and gives an honest portrayal of what it is like to lose one’s partner—there will not be dry eyes after reading this chapter.

Risotto with Nettles surprised me. It is a book I will go back to, and bring up over dinner conversations. You will love her character, her anecdotes, charm, and most of all her dedicated discussion of Italian food.

[Emily Varga is an English Literature graduate who has worked in book publishing in North America. She has previously reviewed works in her university newspaper literary and arts supplements. She currently lives in Scotland where she works in the public sector. Emily is an active member of her city book club and still enjoys writing the occasional book review.]

Tyranny in Big Pieces, Little Pieces

This week CLR presents Ayodele Morocco-Clarke's review of Big Pieces, Little Pieces, the StoryTime short story by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. Enjoy!

Big Pieces, Little Pieces is a short story by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. In this story, the writer explores the burning issue of domestic abuse. The story is told in the second person narrative style which has the resultant effect of transporting the reader right into the middle of the sequence of unfolding events.

Big Pieces, Little Pieces opens by showing the reader the autocratic nature of the patriarchal figure in the household, rapidly unfurling into a catalogue of abuse of horrific magnitude. Whilst reading, one wonders why the wife does not take the children and run, run, run. Surely anything would be better than subjecting oneself and one’s offspring to erratic, irrational behaviour and regular physical abuse.

The story is even more heartbreaking as it is told from the point of view of one of the children who has lived with and through this constant abuse. The story reveals that though the father rules the roost with an iron fist, the abused wife attracts no support or sympathy from her sister-in-law despite her seeing clear evidence of the abuse. She actually lays the blame of all the violence on the victim trying to exonerate her brother, justifying his actions on the ground that “he was the head of the family and knew what was best for everyone.” To add salt to the wound, she then goes on to accuse the wife of bringing forth the wrath of her brother and refuses to intervene despite heartfelt pleas to do so. In her words –

“I have never seen such a woman, honestly! Is it my fault that you do not know how to appease your husband, that you anger him all the time? I will say it again, lo yiwo umendo.”

And so, the abuse continues unabated, culminating in a series of events which though do not shock, but nevertheless saddens the reader while following the story as it hurtles rapidly to its end.

The downside I found in the story was where it appeared the writer confused a bit of narration with what should really have been dialogue and sometimes what really is dialogue is not properly denoted as such (But that may just be me being pedantic as the writer might have chosen to adopt in parts the Nadine Gordimer-esque style used in “The Pickup”, although this would be inconsistent with other parts of the dialogue employed). These minute niggling points however do not take away from the beauty of a well narrated story.

With this story, one can see that Tshuma is an emerging writer with immense promise. Big Pieces, Little Pieces is one of the StoryTime stories which were selected for publication in the short story anthology “African Roar” out in late April 2010. Watch out for African Roar and Tshuma. Both should surely be worth reading.


[Ayodele Morocco-Clarke is a Nigerian lawyer and writer of mixed heritage who has a passion for literature. She is the editor of Critical Literature Review and her written works have appeared in Author Africa 2009, Hackwriters (a University of Portsmouth magazine), Sphere Literary Magazine, Storytime, Author-Me and on The Clarity of Night blog. She also has work forthcoming in Mimi Magazine, The Anthology of Immigrant Writing(2010) and African Roar [2010 short story anthology, co-published by Lion Press and StoryTime]. Ayodele hopes to publish an anthology of short fiction soon and is currently working on her first novel.]

TOO MUCH HAPPINESS

This week, CLR is happy to present another review of one of Random House's books. Too Much Happiness is the latest anthology of short stories by Alice Munro and it is reviewed here by award winning writer Sarah Hilary. Enjoy!

My first experience of reading Alice Munro was her story, Wild Swans, a story with a taut, irresistible rhythm that made the shocking event at its heart feel entirely natural. This, to me, is the marvel of Munro’s writing. She knows a good story must contain a grain of surprise, an occurrence we do not expect but which nevertheless feels part of the living pulse of the story. At her best, she puts her considerable skill into structuring the story around the surprise, drawing us towards it in ways we cannot always anticipate but which, ultimately, satisfy our curiosity and our appetite as readers.

There are stories in this latest collection that show Munro at her skillful best.

Child’s Play is one, a masterfully plotted tale of childhood terror and guilt in which our sympathies are divided, sub-divided and then put through the equivalent of a moral meat-grinder in a way that perfectly reflects the confused emotions of the heroines, and victims, at its heart. The character of Verna is vividly described, put at arm’s length from us and then brought nearer until we start to experience some of the heroine’s irrational terror. We know it is irrational; we guess Verna has more to fear from the heroine than she from Verna, but we’re compelled to feel the heroine’s emotions. The story’s ambiguous moral, and its suspended ending, is the better for that.

She was skinny, indeed so narrowly built and with such a small head that she made me think of a snake. Fine black hair lay flat on this head, and fell over her forehead. The skin of her face seemed dull to me as the flap of our old canvas tent, and her cheeks puffed out the way the flap of that tent puffed in a wind. Her eyes were always squinting.

The collection begins with a frightening story, Dimensions, about a woman’s gradual and painful recovery from appalling loss. Munro doesn’t deal in the commonplace, least of all when it comes to emotional responses from her characters and readers. In Dimensions, Doree’s response to the shocking loss of her children is not what we might expect, or it is not only that. There is no familiar ground for the reader to tread here; instead we are confronted by an alien scrubland of grief and survival, hope and despair. It may not be familiar, but it feels real. Honest. Discomfiting. No easy place for us to rest, or pass judgement of our own. I thought this was a terrific story.

I felt less strongly about Fiction (as an aside: I’m often disappointed by Munro’s story titles, which rarely do justice to the content). A truncated novel rather than a short story, to my taste Fiction was out-of-whack almost from the outset. Adultery separates a woman from her husband. It seems painful, the point of the story. But then we pick up years later and everyone in the novel is remarried for the third or fourth time; adultery is the norm. A witness to the original adultery has written a novel about it, but she fails to recognise the heroine of her own story when they are brought face to face after years apart. The story fell flat at the first fast-forward to the future, and didn’t pick up pace again. As another aside: I don’t care for stories about writers, and was turned off by the long passages recited from the author’s novel which read as a plot conceit, putting me at arm’s length from the heart of the story and keeping me there.

Wenlock Edge (great title, but not Munro’s own) confused me, I admit it. It contains the creepiest encounter I’ve read in any story in a long time, somewhat echoing the shock at the heart of Wild Swans, but I didn’t understand the ending, an exchange of addresses that implied a betrayal or a reconciliation but of whom or what I was left unsure.

Relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, childhood friends, are explored in Face, Some Women, and Deep-Holes. The latter left me cold, petering out after a promising start into an awkward standoff between mother and son (again, this story relied on the device of fast-forwarding, losing me along the way). Face was suitably shocking, and sad, very sad. Some Women flirted with the idea of domestic prostitution, uneasy adult bartering as witnessed by a child. Both stories are effective variations on Munro’s theme of the depths and shallows of human isolation.

Free Radicals reverted to the terrifying territory of Dimensions and Child’s Play. An middle-aged woman, newly widowed and dying of cancer, confronts a killer in her home. The action is centred with unflagging focus on this confrontation. Munro catches us in the moment and doesn’t let go. The structure is drum-taut, told in real time. No fast-forwarding, no chance for our attention to waver. And then the treat of a second shock, skillfully hidden in the unfolding top-story, written almost as an aside but with the power to stun us a second time.

‘Pretty plate,’ he said, holding it up as if to see his face in it. Just as she turned her attention to the eggs she heard it smash on the floor.

‘Oh mercy me,’  he said in a new voice, a squeaky and definitely nasty voice. ‘Look what I’ve gone and done now.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said, knowing now that nothing was.

The story I liked least – in fact I struggled to finish it – was the story from which the collection took its title. Too Much Happiness, as Munro explains in a footnote, is inspired by the real life of Sophie Kovalevsky, a novelist and mathematician from the nineteenth century whose life story, full of surprises, clearly captured Munro’s heart and her imagination. The problem, for me, is that the discipline of telling a true story stifled Munro’s real imagination, preventing her from following her own rhythm and introducing her own surprises. It didn’t engage or satisfy me because I was too aware that I was missing out on Munro’s gift for telling stories of her own invention.

Wood is exactly such a story. Seemingly simple, deeply complex, with a heart that beats right off the page. A man made lonely by his wife’s breakdown drifts further and further into his isolated life as a woodcutter. His love of trees is palpable, as is his newfound happiness and the guilt he experiences as a result. His withdrawal from his wife and the rest of the world nearly costs him his life, yet when he is saved and sees his wife restored (a thing he has longed for) he acknowledges a sense of loss:

Because he knows he isn’t feeling quite the way he thought he would if her vitality came back to her. And the noise he makes could be to cover that lack, or excuse it…

Some loss fogging up this gain. Some loss he’d be ashamed to admit to, if he had the energy.

This character’s voice is pitch-perfect, his inner monologue a Munro-patented confusion of conflicting emotions that draw their credibility and their power from exactly that confusion. Nothing is black and white here; Munro paints in shades of grey, with skill and tenderness and unflinching compassion. Long may she continue to do so.

[Sarah Hilary (http://sarah-crawl-space.blogspot.com/) is an award-winning writer whose fiction appears in The Fish Anthology, Smokelong Quarterly, The Best of Every Day Fiction I and II, and in the Crime Writers’ Association anthology, MO: Crimes of Practice. Sarah won the Sense Creative Award in 2010, and the Fish Historical Crime Prize in 2008. Most recently, her work was Highly Commended by Aesthetica and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A column about her mother, who was a child internee of the Japanese, was published in Foto8 Magazine and later in the Bristol Review of Books.]

A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted

Critical literature Review begins the second quarter of the year with Ikhide Ikheloa's Review of Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's début novel I Do Not Come to You by Chance which won the Commonwealth Writers' Best First Book Prize for the African Region and is in the running for the overall Commonwealth Writers' Best First Book Prize. Enjoy!

Exile is a fitting metaphor for alienation. It is akin to the biblical purgatory. Nothing is quite 

right; one feels neither here nor there, trapped in a dispensation that is not quite alien, not quite home. And all your senses rebel to the death against the changes that you need to embrace in order to enjoy, well, purgatory. I guess it makes sense, this disconcerting feeling of constantly being out-of-sorts, like a gentle but persistent hangover. It wouldn’t be purgatory otherwise. It is the assault or the rebellion of your senses that hurts the most.

Nothing tastes, smells, looks the same and everywhere you go you hear voices of impish vendors selling fake reminders of home because there is money in selling the weary traveler a mirage. And it is not for lack of trying; exiles go through a million hoops to replicate the bread of their childhood.

There is a multibillion dollar industry out here in America devoted to soothing our collective angst. If you no longer know how to tie your gele head-tie, there are shops that will do the honors for you – for a modest fee of course. There are “African markets” that sell stale desiccated and preserved replicas of what one misses the most about home. It is not the same, but it is better than nothing.

Every now and then, the exile gets a reprieve from the purgatory of dislocation – in the form of an authentic treat – straight from home. Visiting relatives and friends from Nigeria know now not to knock on my door without the requisite offerings - Open Sesame to my hearth and my heart – bottles of groundnuts, fresh ground ogbono, egusi, snails the size of an elephant’s ears, etc. And if they really want to open the iroko doors to my rugged heart, they come bearing books written by Nigerians inNigeria and published in Nigeria.

Prolonged exile burdens the memory to the point of vital literary loss and no amount of poetic license can stem this loss. Most books aboutNigeria written by Nigerians abroad tend to suffer the indignity of loss. This deficit is from prolonged absence by the writer’s muse from the scene of the crime (Nigeria). I look to Nigerian writers actually stationed in Nigeria to sate my hunger for a real literary taste of home. And writers like Kaine Agary and Ike Oguine have delivered big on that expectation.

I am glad to say that despite (perhaps because of) the challenges of living in Nigeria (some of these challenges appear fictitious judging from the ruddy cheeks of my Nigerian-based relatives on Facebook!) these writers have been up to the task. In this respect, I ask you to run, don’t walk, just run to the nearest wherever-people-buy-books-these-days and grab you a copy of Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s peppy book I Do Not Come to You By Chance. 

I have racked my brains, thought about it, and come to the possibly audacious conclusion that this writer may have just written one of the most comprehensive documentation in prose-song of the ravages of the locust of materialism on our people’s way of life. Using the scourge of 419 as evidence number one, Nwaubani’s Nigeria gently explodes into a sea of caricatures and spills out onto the pages of our consciousness. I am literally in awe of the audacity of this writer’s muse.

How do I describe this little book that could? O yes, imagine, O gentle reader, imagine a frying pan, rich with all sorts of orisi risi, sizzling, all these delicacies jumping about for joy waiting to clamber into your waiting mouth. The book is funny in unexpected places: “He brought out an it-was-white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped the sweat from his brows.” (p 59) And it is caustic in all the right places: “Although his position on the family tree could not be described in anything less than seven sentences, Odinkemmelu was introduced to us as our cousin.” (p 24).

Using enthusiastic and lively prose, Nwaubani offers a chilling documentation of greed and rampant materialism replicated from city to city, village to village and generation to generation. This is a cancer that is eating at the nation called Nigeria. This sounds crazy, but I would love to see this book in a high quality movie. It definitely reads like an exquisite movie expertly set to print. Nwaubani writes with the confidence of one with an insider’s knowledge if 419 activities. The book actually takes its title from the beginning of a “419” letter to an unsuspecting wealthy foreigner or “mugu.”:

“Dear Friend, I do not come to you by chance. Upon my quest for a trusted and reliable foreign business man or company I was given your contact by the Nigerian chamber of Commerce and Industry, I hope that you can be trusted to handle a transaction of this magnitude.” (p 178)

So now, you know what the book is all about. The main character Kingsley loses his idealism and joins his uncle Boniface aka Cash Daddy in a lucrative crime syndicate that shakes down gullible foreigners (mostly white) from the safety of the cyber-cafes that litter Nigeria’s urban centers. The story of “419” is now familiar to the point of it being a cliché. The foreigner is lured into paying various “fees” for the (empty) promise of reaping huge sums of money allegedly stashed somewhere in a bank vault. This scam has so affected Nigeria’s international reputation, the country has a penal code numbered “419” that attempts to deal with the issue.

Overwhelming and dismaying to the senses is Nwaubani’s faithful chronicle of the changing of the same seasons of anomie (apologies Soyinka). The prose grabs you like Nigeria and never lets go. Listen to the book’s opening sentence: “My taste buds had been hearing the smell of my mother’s cooking and my stomach had started talking.” Nice. Repeat that to yourself and watch Nigeria parade itself before your eyes. You don’t learn that from an MFA program. As I read this book, the laughter came in liquid fistfuls of sobs. This writer almost turned me into an immobile lunatic, sitting in my living room grinning like a domesticated idiot.

I exaggerate slightly; I did not move from my living room until I finished reading this book. I sat grinning, my heart and soul yelling for more. I would not part with this precious book; the shower came to me and gave me a bath. The book was that good.  Ah, the poetry in the conversations was authentically Nigerian and that takes confidence and skill. Man, I love Nwaubani’s writing. She breaks down complex truths into simple edible morsels of well, joy. What a treat. If you are looking for an unpretentious little story that will engage you, this one will do the trick.

Nwaubani is a truly unique and authentic voice. There is so much wisdom in her voice; it is young and fresh, bearing tart, plump and delightful attitudes, pregnant with truths untold and re-told. In this book one learns quickly that poverty comes in many forms. Nwaubani’sNigeria has become really poor in ways that famous Nigerian writers have not been able to convey in several dense books about the subject.

The reader comes face to face with the ravages of materialism in the pretense of the new evangelical religion, willing faux wealth on the dispossessed (for a modest tithe of course).  The book tracks the flight of purposeful existence and provides the reader a concise, succinct, deep commentary on so many social issues – the extended family system, corruption, the scourge of materialism, etc.

Nwaubani’s Nigeria reeks of rampant anti-intellectualism. Hear Kingsley’s uncle Cash Daddy berating him for wearing his idealism and intellect on his tattered sleeves: “Is honesty an achievement? Personality is one thing, achievement is another thing. So what has your father achieved? How much money is he leaving for you when he dies? Or is it his textbooks that you’ll collect and pass on to your own children?” (p 153)

Priceless was the Onitsha-Market-Literature style love letter (p 72). Original and scrumptious turns of phrases open your mouth wide in wonder and awe. This is unapologetic prose – you either get it or you don’t – there is no appendix or index explaining what eba means. It takes confidence to have that attitude. “At age seven, when it was confirmed that her right hand could reach across her head and touch her left ear, Augustina moved back to her father’s house and started attending primary school. Being long and skinny had worked to her advantage.”

I love Nwaubani; she wields her words expertly, sometimes like an accurate missile or sometimes like a soothing balm. “Odinkemmelu took his body odor away to the kitchen and returned with a teaspoon of salt.” (p 17). Sweet. Her prose even gives voice to inanimate objects: My tender triceps started grumbling (p 19)

And if I could, I would sing a lusty oriki to the prodigious industry of the editors; the book is edited just right and it retains the author’s signature voice. It takes great skill to edit a book of this sort and still keep it chock full of crisp rollicking prose. “My father was a walking encyclopedia, and he flipped his pages with the zeal and precision of a magician.” (p 22) The furtiveness of the sentence before your eyes holds your attention captive as it hands you over to the next sentence. Brilliant. The writing reminds me so much of Ike Oguine’s A Squatter’s Tale; maybe also, Chukwuemeka Ike’s The Potter’s Wheel.

There are all these delightful characters with colorful names like World Bank, Protocol Officer and Wizard. The book expertly showcases the caricature as real life and out of the pages of this book; Nigeria simply spills out into the streets of my part of America. For Nwaubani uses every bit of a conversation and simply drops it in the book. Nwaubani’s descriptive powers are fueled by a dark delicious imagination:

 “Cash Daddy’s cheeks were puffy, his neck was chunky, his five limbs were thick and long.” (p 213) Five limbs! Lawd have mercy! And her Pidgin English is impeccable: “Make una come see o, Graveyard don begin dey use perfume” (p 29).

One nice fringe benefit: I learnt a new fable about why the tortoise’s shell is cracked in several places. I won’t tell you; you will have to read the book yourself!

As a first novel, the book does show its flaws gently, ever so gently. The book is fairly autobiographical in parts. For the most part Nwaubani pulled off the tough trick of disengaging from the characters. However, the reader keeps seeing the writer in the main character Kingsley (Interesting enough, Kingsley is also named Opara - first son, and Adaobi, Nwaubani’s name means first daughter). The research that went into writing this book must have been considerable and it shows in the quality of the book.

Finally, I offer the criticism that the book does come off as a morality tale that begins too neatly and ends too tidily, Life is a lot messier than that. But who cares? It was pure fun looking at Nigeria’s myriad issues through this mirror of a thousand delights.

  

[Ikhide R. Ikheloa is an arts critic, writer and journalist. He can be reached at xokigbo@yahoo.com] 

A Chance to Win Ian McEwan's Latest Book "Solar"

Critical Literature Review in conjunction with Random House UK is happy to give away an autographed copy of Ian McEwan's latest book "Solar".

There is a chance to grab a signed copy of Ian McEwan's new book titled "Solar" due to be released on 18 March 2010 (published by Jonathan Cape - a Random House imprint) or one of five tee-shirts. For a chance to win, answer the following questions by commenting below or on our Facebook or Twitter Pages. What is Ian McEwan's date of birth and what is the title of his first published book?

The first person to provide the correct answer in the comment box will win the signed book and the next five correct answers will win the five tee-shirts. Goodluck.

The Visa to a Better Life

This week, Critical Literature Review presents Ayodele Morocco-Clarke's review of Thansanqa N. Ncube's StoryTime published short story titled "The Visa". Enjoy!

Almost everywhere one looks, the phrase ‘The world is a global village’ is bandied  about as if all barriers and borders which separate the countries that comprise the earth’s surface have withered away, leaving people with the freedom to roam freely in a boundary-less world. While this might be true in the cyber world, I need not point out that the same does not apply in the physical world. The restrictions placed by different sovereign countries upon entry into their national territory by aliens has had the effect of often barricading most of the planet’s underprivileged and/or not so privileged from exercising the right of free movement from one place to another. Citizens of most of the countries of the world have to apply for and be granted some form of visa or entry permit in order to travel to or through the territory of a country other than their own.

The story “The Visa” by Thansanqa N. Ncube follows a man who has fled from Zimbabwe as a result of an ever increasing economic crisis evidenced by hyper-inflation and instability in the country. Leaving behind a fiancée at home, he travels to the United Kingdom on a visitor’s visa with the intention of working illegally and saving enough money to bring his fiancée Sarudzo over to Britain. However, their plans have to be modified when the British government tightens immigration laws which result in fewer people successfully scaling the rigorous visa screening and entry clearance processes. Thus, the protagonist’s new goal is to save enough money from his wages to eventually return home to conduct the marriage of his dreams, extend their house back home and sustain the new family he and his bride will eventually raise.

After converting the visitor’s visa (he had initially entered the UK with) into a two year student’s visa, the protagonist continues to carry out the plan agreed with his fiancée back home. He phones her regularly and often sends money back home with the intention of returning to settle down with her. Unfortunately for Sarudzo, it is well known that even the best laid plans of men sometimes go awry, and the entry of the sophisticated Skhu into our protagonist’s life exposes him to a side of life to which he had hitherto been unaware of. This leads him to a crossroads in which he has to decide on who he will choose to carry on his future with.

The Visa is the type of story anyone who is even remotely aware of the nature of immigrant living in the UK would have encountered in some form of the other or at least heard about. The subterfuge employed by many economic migrants in a bid to set their foot on British soil is one that is well documented in the media and other literary treatise.

I found that the author let the story down with his poor editing of the work. Also, the author appears overly fond of the use of ellipses, whether or not they are appropriate in the telling of the story (another instance in which a good edit would have cleaned up the work suitably).

I further observed that the description of the conversion of the protagonist’s visa from that of a visitor to that of a student does not fall within the protocol adopted by the British Home Office which requires applicants to return to their home country to make that particular type of visa change.  Moreover, visitor-to-student visa conversions are not awarded within the UK to individuals whose visitor’s visas have expired. One may however excuse this on the ground of authorial, artistic or narrative license. There is also some confusion in the story regarding the expiration of the student visa. For example, in a narrative sentence immediately preceding that of Skhu, there is a contradiction of whether or not the protagonist has overstayed his welcome in the UK –

“…I cannot stay in this country and live like a fugitive. My visa is expiring, and I have to go, maybe I can try and apply for another one from home”

“Of course you know you will not get another visa, you have overstayed your student visa…”

However, the foregoing nevertheless, should you allow yourself not to be deterred by these shortcomings, this is quite an enjoyable story you are likely to appreciate as it relates to real issues relevant in today’s world.

[Ayodele Morocco-Clarke is a Nigerian lawyer and writer of mixed heritage who has a passion for literature. She is the editor of Critical Literature Review and her written works have appeared in Author Africa 2009, Hackwriters (a University of Portsmouth magazine), Sphere Literary Magazine, StoryTime, Author-Me and on The Clarity of Night blog. She also has work forthcoming in  Mimi Magazine, The Anthology of Immigrant Writing (2010) and  African Roar [2010 short story anthology, co-published by Lion Press and StoryTime]. Ayodele hopes to publish an anthology of short fiction soon and is currently working on her first novel.]

A Swashbuckling War Epic!!!

Ramdom House, the UK publishing company provided Critical Literature Review with some books to review and this week, Critical Literature Review is proud to present the review of the first of the books. Produced below is Emily Varga's review of Claire Letemendia's historical epic début novel, "The Best of Men".  Enjoy!!!

Claire Letemendia, the debut author of The Best of Men, drops readers into the world of English Civil war—a world filled with enough intrigue, sex, violence, love, and spies—just enough to make us forget about the state of the world’s banks for a little while.

The novel’s lead protagonist is Laurence Beaumont, a cardsharp, mercenary, and spy, who has spent 6 years on continental Europe and is now returning to Great Britain—with proof of a plot to assassinate the King in his possession. Beaumont is the typical tragic, bad boy hero—hopping from bed to bed while at the same time engaging in exciting action scenes which are decidedly not Byronesque.

When I first picked up this book, I thought I would need about a month to finish it, and I am not a traditionally slow reader. This is because the book is a 700 page long historical novel. However, the more I read, the more I became engrossed in the novel and impressed by the story telling tactics of Letemendia. Often, large historical novels such as this can become bogged down by history and the reader can get lost in an academic textbook of fact. This book does have its fair share of history and packs a wallop of information. But it still manages to keep a pace that makes it interesting to the reader and exciting as a story. This is particularly hard in a novel with the setting of the English Civil War, as Letemendia’s is. There are times when there are so many characters that it is difficult to keep track of who is who and which historical event is what. There are also moments when I definitely noticed that it was a 700 page book that I was reading. However, these criticisms are fleeting amidst the vivid world that Letemendia invokes and the visceral characters that she builds within this world.

I particularly liked the character of Isabelle Savage—a temptress for Beaumont and an intelligent and strong woman in her own right. It is sometimes very difficult to find female characters in historical novels like this which are not reduced to stereotype—which is why a woman who is a sexual creature but who is also very independent and who lives in the middle of the 17^th century is so very refreshing. Perhaps she is a bit out of her time, but with this view then so is the protagonist. It is what keeps the reader engaged and what allows the reader to relate to the main characters—and find humanity in history. 

The beginning of the novel took a bit of work to get into, but once you got past that first initial chunk things began to form shape. Instead of trying to figure things out and remember which character is connected to what, I just gave up after a while and kept reading. After that, things got a bit easier and I was able to enjoy the novel as a novel, and not a giant historical enactment. That is not to say that history lovers will not enjoy this story, on the contrary, evidence of Letemendia’s incredible research and scholarly background seeps into every page of the novel. This is a book which took her ten years to write, and it has definitely paid off.

There is heady romance in this story, adventure, swashbuckling, and a brilliantly developed plot. What I have described here has all the chemistry for a great bodice-ripper romance novel—but it isn’t that easy, or simple. The plot is a story that has been told before, but it is rare to find such an excellent combination of storytelling, historical world-building and riveting suspense wrapped up in one book. The main conflict—that of the assassination of the king—is not resolved by the end of the novel, but that is because Claire Letemendia promises a trilogy.

I do think that this book could definitely have been sheared down a bit to become a more succinct and sleeker novel. But as it is now, I would recommend it to anyone who wants an escape into an excellently built world. If you want a fantastic historical detail of the English Civil War, more information on the role of the Scottish in the civil war (as history tends to forget that both Ireland and Scotland fought in this war too!), and also to know the machinations of life in a brothel, or read a book with action, torture, romance, and duels, then you just may like this book. It didn’t take me quite a month to read it, but it is by no means a quick read. However, if you are willing to invest the time, it is definitely worth it. Forget about the recession for a while and think about how much worse—or better—things could have been amidst the English Civil War.

[Emily Varga is an English Literature graduate who has worked in book publishing in North America. She has previously reviewed works in her university newspaper literary and arts supplements. She currently lives in Scotland where she works in the public sector. Emily is an active member of her city book club and still enjoys writing the occasional book review.] 

Out of the Ashes Arises a Great Writer (Review of “The Phoenix” by Adrian Igoni Barrett)

This week, Critical Literature Review presents Ayodele Morocco-Clarke's review of Nigerian writer Adrian Igoni Barrett's short story titled "The Phoenix" which is published on StoryTime and in 2005 won the BBC Short Story Competition. Critical Literature Review hopes you enjoy reading the review and hopes it encourages you to read this and other short stories on StoryTime.

I first stumbled on Igoni Barrett’s writings on Laura Hird's website a few years back and swiftly became enamoured with his style of writing after reading stories in the first edition of his short story anthology titled “From Caves of Rotten Teeth” – an almost bizarre title which he derived from a poem by Caribbean painter and poet, Leroy Clarke.

The Phoenix, the story under review, is one of the fourteen stories that comprise the short story collection From Caves of Rotten Teeth. It is also published online on the StoryTime website alongside another of Igoni Barrett’s hilarious short story entitled “Pot Pourri”.

The Phoenix was one of five stories which won the 2005 BBC Short Story Competition and was subsequently broadcast by the BBC in 2006. Reading this story, it is not impossible to see why the judges (Helen Simpson, Brian Chikwava and Romesh Gunesekera) chose it as one of that year’s winning entries.

The Phoenix traces the life of Tartius Abrachius who lost both his arms in a tribal ambush. Usually, such a fate in Nigeria has the effect of reducing the life of the double amputee to one of a beggarly existence, but the determination and resourcefulness of Tartius Abrachius was such that he decided to take on a trade to eke out a living rather than be left at the whims and mercy of oftentimes reluctant benefactors. Surprisingly, armless Tartius Abrachius chose to be a tailor. Not an easy task, but he mastered the art of wielding his scissors, and threading his sewing machine with his feet.

Tartius Abrachius’s profession and art sees him leaving his homeland behind to find better business and fortune in the big city. While there plying his trade, he gathers loyal customers ensuring his daily survival. It is there in the big city that he is reunited with a dream he once had when his limbs had been intact; a dream of playing football. Before his limbs had been severed, Tartius Abrachius could do a mean sprint. In fact it was his running skill that helped in saving his life in the massacre that had cost his companions theirs. These revivified dreams of his and his running prowess take Tartius Abrachius where he never envisaged.

Igoni Barrett delivers a red hot killer twist at the end of this story; a story which had me enthralled when I read it. There are many gems within The Pheonix – and generally within his “From Caves of Rotten Teeth” anthology – which showcase Igoni Barrett not just as an emerging writer to watch out for, but (dare I say) one of the best of the new crop of Nigerian (and indeed African) writers in recent times.

Igoni Barrett displays a visceral knack for bringing his subject-matter and characters to life. Each sentence in the story is well articulated, and apart from the first paragraph detailing Tartius Abrachius’s homeland (which I do not think adds much to the story), each sentence appears to have been pondered over carefully ensuring the overall harmony of the story. There are no sentences which fail to pull their weight; impostors masquerading as friends when indeed they are nothing but foes to the overall yarn.

Some people may describe Igoni Barrett’s style of writing as highfalutin or verbose. I however think that literary connoisseurs will appreciate that he is a writer who has honed his skill carefully, executing his craft with an ease and mastery that can only be admired and/or envied. There were some phrases and sentences that I particularly found poignant; one such line was the following:

“But that was the year that destiny intervened, and as no contingency plan of man can salvage a dream that the fates have repudiated, he watched his ambition shrivel and die.”

The foregoing, alongside several visually scrumptious imageries ensures that there is a lot for the reader to enjoy in the story. It is not hard to see what so captivated the BBC Short Story Competition judges about The Phoenix that they adjudged it – above a plethora of other entries – a winner in the competition.

All I can say in conclusion is that I enjoyed reading Igoni Barrett’s The Phoenix. Immensely.

[Ayodele Morocco-Clarke is a Nigerian lawyer and writer of mixed heritage who has a passion for literature. She is the editor of Critical Literature Review and her written works have appeared in Author Africa 2009, Hackwriters (a University of Portsmouth magazine), Sphere Literary Magazine, StoryTime, Author-Me and on The Clarity of Night blog. She also has work forthcoming in Saraba Magazine, Mimi Magazine, The Anthology of Immigrant Writing (2010) and  African Roar [2010 short story anthology, co-published by Lion Press and StoryTime]. Ayodele hopes to publish an anthology of short fiction soon and is currently working on her first novel.]