All Our Names

Wow, I have to say that this Knopf hardback might be one of the coolest I've had — everything from design and typesetting to how the paper feels is amazing. (/technical note)

Can't say I loved the content as much though. It's a great story, and the two male protagonists felt interesting and complicated. The Helen character seemed a little flat for the first few chapters, but about halfway through the book she started gaining more depth.

There's something strange about how Mengestu ignores setting. I'm not a fan of long and overly detailed descriptions, but I like to be able to ‘see' where a scene takes place, even if only vaguely. At times it felt like a book about Africa and the Midwest that was written by an author who'd never personally been to either (which of course is not the case here). There's something about Mengestu's style that just isn't quite my thing. I kept wishing for more dialogue as it's something that he does really well, but the book was full of introspections that felt a bit mundane.

This is one of the books that had been sitting in my TBR list for the longest time, I'm glad I finally got to it because it was really good. It's honest, often unflinchingly so. There's no theatrics here so everything feels realistic, and I honestly could not put it down once I started.