An epic story of cultural change in Uganda and a novella set in an idyllic English community, these debuts have little in common apart from the strange affliction and that I’m happy to recommend them both. In the first, multiple branches of an extended family at the beginning of the twenty-first century are affected by a curse on their ancestor 250 years before. In the second, James probably feels cursed when he wakes up one morning to find he can’t move half his face.
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Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
The saga of a Ugandan family with rather a lot of twins, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s debut novel spans two and a half centuries of cultural, environmental and political change. Comprising six short-novella length “books”, each focusing on a branch of the extended family, it begins in 1750 when the family is cursed by a Tutsi immigrant and ends with a reunion of the clan in 2004. On the way, it takes in conflicts between tradition and modernity, city versus rural lifestyles, changing attitudes to spirituality and to sex, and the Ganda perception of twins as one person divided. Knowing very little about Uganda, apart from vivid memories of Idi Amin’s expulsion of the prosperous Asian community in the early 1970s, I welcomed the opportunity to combine a cultural history lesson with a cracking read.
En route to the capital to pay homage to the new king, Kintu Kidda accidentally kills his adopted son. Returning home several weeks later, having buried the body on the journey as best he could, he fails to announce the death in the traditional way. When the boy’s natural father discovers what happened, he curses Kintu and his bloodline with mental illness, sudden death and suicide – and perhaps also parental neglect. Several generations later, Suubi Nnakintu, ignorant of her family due to having been abandoned at the age of five, is haunted by her dead twin sister. In the same city, and unknown to her, another descendant has been murdered by the mob after being branded a thief. She is also unaware of her relatives, Faisi and Kanani Kintu, both unfortunately too busy sowing the seed of the Anglican gospel to pay much attention to their own twins. Also neglected by his mother, Isaac Newton Kintu neither speaks nor walks until the age of seven yet manages to fund his education to degree level through working as a DJ. But the reader meets him initially in unhappy circumstances: at the funeral of his young wife after her death apparently from HIV/AIDS. Miisi Kintu has seen the deaths of ten of his twelve children. He also experiences vivid dreams but, as a highly educated and rational man who has lived abroad, he’s dismissive of their possible meaning, and of the family curse. His analogy of Frankenstein-like surgery for European colonisation and subsequent denigration of Africa should be required reading for everyone in the West.
The family reunion section didn’t work as well for me as the individual stories, although it gets to the heart of the myth via a medium-led reburial of the ancestors to lift the curse. Published by Oneworld, who provided my review copy, Kintu is a multilayered epic that will keep you turning the page. For a very different, but equally engrossing, story about twins, see my review of Mischling.
En route to the capital to pay homage to the new king, Kintu Kidda accidentally kills his adopted son. Returning home several weeks later, having buried the body on the journey as best he could, he fails to announce the death in the traditional way. When the boy’s natural father discovers what happened, he curses Kintu and his bloodline with mental illness, sudden death and suicide – and perhaps also parental neglect. Several generations later, Suubi Nnakintu, ignorant of her family due to having been abandoned at the age of five, is haunted by her dead twin sister. In the same city, and unknown to her, another descendant has been murdered by the mob after being branded a thief. She is also unaware of her relatives, Faisi and Kanani Kintu, both unfortunately too busy sowing the seed of the Anglican gospel to pay much attention to their own twins. Also neglected by his mother, Isaac Newton Kintu neither speaks nor walks until the age of seven yet manages to fund his education to degree level through working as a DJ. But the reader meets him initially in unhappy circumstances: at the funeral of his young wife after her death apparently from HIV/AIDS. Miisi Kintu has seen the deaths of ten of his twelve children. He also experiences vivid dreams but, as a highly educated and rational man who has lived abroad, he’s dismissive of their possible meaning, and of the family curse. His analogy of Frankenstein-like surgery for European colonisation and subsequent denigration of Africa should be required reading for everyone in the West.
The family reunion section didn’t work as well for me as the individual stories, although it gets to the heart of the myth via a medium-led reburial of the ancestors to lift the curse. Published by Oneworld, who provided my review copy, Kintu is a multilayered epic that will keep you turning the page. For a very different, but equally engrossing, story about twins, see my review of Mischling.
The Alarming Palsy of James Orr by Tom Lee
Husband, father, management consultant and chair of the New Glades Estate Residents’ Committee, James Orr wakes up one morning with a sense of “something not quite right, some indefinable shift in the normal order of things”. Viewing his face in the bathroom mirror, he’s shocked to find the left side of his face has collapsed; indeed, it is paralysed, making speaking and eating a challenge. Diagnosing Bell’s Palsy, his GP signs him off on the sick and James spends the next several weeks napping interspersed with solitary walks in the nearby woods.
At first, this seems a beautifully written but relatively straightforward account of living with a disturbing but not particularly serious health condition. Bell’s Palsy has no known cause or cure but, being quite disfiguring, can impact on relationships with oneself and others. Mr A having experienced this a few years ago in perhaps a milder form than James, I was ready to sympathise but, consistent with the author’s intention, I wondered what else might be distorted in James’ otherwise idyllic life. He tells us early on that he and his wife are sleeping separately and, although he later offers an explanation, I wasn’t altogether convinced.
As his affliction continues, the novel gets creepier as James becomes progressively more alienated from his family, his neighbours and his work identity. Is this because people are reacting negatively to his altered appearance or James’s self-perception as all-round model citizen is fundamentally flawed? Rich in symbolism, Tom Lee’s debut novella can be read as a parable about the cracks in utopian communities and/or a retelling of the classic Jekyll and Hyde. Thanks to Granta books for my review copy.
If you enjoy novels with a male narrator who is potentially more disturbing than he likes to think, you might be interested in my second novel, Underneath.
At first, this seems a beautifully written but relatively straightforward account of living with a disturbing but not particularly serious health condition. Bell’s Palsy has no known cause or cure but, being quite disfiguring, can impact on relationships with oneself and others. Mr A having experienced this a few years ago in perhaps a milder form than James, I was ready to sympathise but, consistent with the author’s intention, I wondered what else might be distorted in James’ otherwise idyllic life. He tells us early on that he and his wife are sleeping separately and, although he later offers an explanation, I wasn’t altogether convinced.
As his affliction continues, the novel gets creepier as James becomes progressively more alienated from his family, his neighbours and his work identity. Is this because people are reacting negatively to his altered appearance or James’s self-perception as all-round model citizen is fundamentally flawed? Rich in symbolism, Tom Lee’s debut novella can be read as a parable about the cracks in utopian communities and/or a retelling of the classic Jekyll and Hyde. Thanks to Granta books for my review copy.
If you enjoy novels with a male narrator who is potentially more disturbing than he likes to think, you might be interested in my second novel, Underneath.
 | Can I link these novels to 99-word story about boots? The modern Ugandans don’t walk far; while their ancestors went barefoot. James visits the woods daily but an hour’s long walk for him and for that he doesn’t need boots. As for a booty affliction, I can think of only good things: my sturdy walking boots and where they take me; the bright blue boots I’ve learnt to love now I know not to subject them to long wet grass. Alas, I do have a real-life, although a challenge to squeeze into so few words: |
A cautionary tale about plantar fasciitis
Bliss: after ten hours, to loosen my laces, peel off my socks, expose my feet to the air. The gravel’s sharp, so I slip on flip-flops and pit-pat to the driver’s door. Ouch! Pain shoots across the sole whenever I flex my foot. Afterwards, a tingling that never disappears. Will I have to cancel my long-distance walk?
Plantar fasciitis, says the physio. Prescribes ice, massage, gel insoles: I’m happy again. But three days in, my heels are throbbing. Blisters, moi? With the insoles my broken-in boots don’t fit like Cinderella’s glass slipper anymore. Shucks, only 160 miles to go!
Bliss: after ten hours, to loosen my laces, peel off my socks, expose my feet to the air. The gravel’s sharp, so I slip on flip-flops and pit-pat to the driver’s door. Ouch! Pain shoots across the sole whenever I flex my foot. Afterwards, a tingling that never disappears. Will I have to cancel my long-distance walk?
Plantar fasciitis, says the physio. Prescribes ice, massage, gel insoles: I’m happy again. But three days in, my heels are throbbing. Blisters, moi? With the insoles my broken-in boots don’t fit like Cinderella’s glass slipper anymore. Shucks, only 160 miles to go!
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