The Thing Around Your Neck
Ratings42
Average rating3.9
I discovered that the short story genre is not for me, despite the fact that I truly liked the book. I enjoy learning more about the characters and their backgrounds, as well as how their stories turn out. the work lacks only that, in my opinion.
A great way to end International Women's Day by finishing this collection of short stories by my favorite author. I didn't know that is was short stories when I picked it up, but Chimamanda has an amazing talent for making you feel strongly about her characters in less than a full page. The way she strings words together is always artful. I love how defiant and sometimes self righteous her characters are and yet all of them are unique in their experiences through political and personal trials. I'm excited to read anything and everything she publishes in the future.
She's the Queen, our literary Beyonce who delivers the goods with an earlier collection of short stories. You can see here the briefest of outlines that will become Americanah later. Confidently African stories told with a measured awareness of Western sensibilities. That storyteller voice that gently leads you across the page with a sharp eye and wry line. Adichie is so adept at alluding to deeper themes with a light touch that doesn't slow down your reading.
If I'm going to quibble the stories can be somewhat jarring in their abrupt end, building steam only to be just as quickly discarded. Like songs that end sharply just as you're expecting a third verse.
Only 1 story really stood out and wowed me, and it was a totally engrossing, gasping-out-loud-on-the-train-and-not-caring-who-noticed kind of story. A few years from now I will certainly still remember it, and maybe the ghosts of a few of the other stories (maybe). Generally fine book overall.
Agh, so good. Soooooo good. Short story collections have two things NOT going for them: (1) the story ends as soon as you get into it, and it's hard to switch contexts, and (2) stories can be uneven. The (1) problem wasn't that bad - mostly since each story immediately pulled you in. They were similar to Adichie's Americanah concerns: Nigerian (specifically, Igbo) intellectuals in Lagos, Philadelphia, and Princeton. The (2) problem also wasn't that bad; of course, some stories were especially good, but none were duds. All of them were basically great.
Agh. Agghhhh. I love Adichie's portrayal of Nigeria. I love her portrayal of America. She's so precise and incisive in her writing. I loved the meta qualities, when you wonder how much is about Adichie's life herself - the titular story, for example, about a group of African writers at a retreat in South Africa led by a bloviating, patronizing, white British author. I mean, like, that must have happened to her, right? It's hard to travel around Africa without tripping over one of these bloviating white old English dudes saying vaguely racist things.
The real piece de resistance of the collection, though, is the final story: a glorious, GLORIOUS!!, fanfic about Things Fall Apart. Of course, Achebe also centralized his stories on the Igbo experience, and - when I read Things Fall Apart - I did indeed get an itch of, “But how would Chimamanda respond to this?” The final story, The Headstrong Historian (available here), is that glorious response. I loved it. Oh man. So good. I loved that it started, and you realize, sneakily, that it's set in a pre-colonial Nigeria, and you're like, “Oh, cool, not modern anymore, interesting.” And then someone mentions “Obierika”, and you're like, “Why is that name familiar.” Oh, cause it's that one side character from Things Fall Apart. And then someone mentions Okonkwo, and you're like, OMG FANFIC YUSSSSS.
But beyond it being high-falutin' fanfic (and thus a direct line to my heart), it was also so wonderfully A RESPONSE to Achebe (and to bloviating male descriptions of Africa). It tells the entire story from Obierika's wife's perspective, a “headstrong”, opinionated lady named Nwamgba. It covers the same overall theme of a traditional Igbo village being violently transformed by the arrival of Christian missionaries, but - MWAH - it's done so much better than Achebe. Nwamgba's son, who she sends to the missionary school so he can learn English and get better at settling legal disputes in this new colonial world, grows up into the biggest asshole ever - rejecting his mom's “savage” traditions, going on and on about Jesus stuff, refusing to call himself by his “tribal” name. Nwamgba's not too cut up about this. And there's this great/amazing/moving moment when Nwamgba, now an old woman, refuses to call her baby granddaughter by her Christian name (“Grace”), calling her instead Afamefuma (“My name will not be lost”), and then hopes/prays that Afamefuma will maintain her resilience and strength and pride in the face of these undermining colonial transformations:
She feared that, at boarding school, the new ways would dissolve her granddaughter's fighting spirit and replace it with either an incurious rigidity, like her son's, or a limp helplessness, like Mgbeke's.
It's taken me so long to read this, although I enjoyed it. But, once I put it down I never felt a drive to pick it up again. Also, it's been a busy year and I've not had much time for reading.
I didn't like the first story in the collection as much as many of the others, which may also have influenced my eagerness to read it. But there are some really good story in here!
I won this book and I never win anything. I push Half of a Yellow Sun on everyone I see so I was thrilled to see Adichie had a new book coming out and even happier to win a copy.
Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of short stories. Adichie has this way of making you think her characters are people who live right next door to you in America and then sneaking in some little this or that that reminds you her people are African and distinctive. The same and different.
I had to pause after I read each story to let the story sink in. To think about it a little. Now that's good writing.