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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin writes entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice. She has published three novels and a short story collection with Inspired Quill. Her debut, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. Her new novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, is rooted in her work as a clinical psychologist in a long-stay psychiatric hospital.

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Strange afflictions: Kintu & The Alarming Palsy of James Orr

21/1/2018

6 Comments

 
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.

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.

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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!

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
6 Comments
Norah Colvin link
22/1/2018 11:54:59 am

Interesting reviews, Anne. I think Kintu is more appealing. The curse sounds quite intriguing, especially when it is conjectured that curses have an effect through suggestion, and most of the family members appear to have not known about it, but still were affected.
My Mum was affected by Bell's Palsy, I think after a bout of mumps either when pregnant or just after the birth of one of my younger siblings. Sadly, I forget the details. She wasn't affected as badly as James appears to have been but her face never lost the droop, especially in one eye, and her smile wasn't straight, though not very noticeably.
Your flash is great too and I wonder is it somewhat BOTS from your long walk across the country a few years ago. I rather like the sound of your blue boots. That plantar fasciitis is rather unpleasant and causing me some problems at the moment.

Reply
Annecdotist
22/1/2018 01:58:55 pm

Interesting reflections on Kintu, Norah – not believing in curses myself, as I imagine you don’t either, I’d expect them to work through autosuggestion. But while reading the novel, I didn’t give it any thought one way or the other. However that could be why I didn’t enjoy the final part so much as the curse could no longer be so easily dismissed!
Shame for your mother. I didn’t check whether it was correct or not but in the novella it said Bell’s palsy is more common in men. Quite a disturbing condition but of course there are far far worse afflictions.
Yes, my flash relates to the long distance walk I’ve mentioned previously – the only long distance walk I’ve done in the UK and I began writing Sugar and Snails shortly after my return. But developing plantar fasciitis after a long day walk about six weeks before made me worried I wouldn’t be able to do it, especially as I didn’t know what it was and it didn’t occur to me for a while to consult a physiotherapist at a sports injury clinic. Then I was so grateful I’d developed it before setting off so I knew what to do about it, although it was funny having to ask for an ice pack/bag of frozen peas each night as I got to my accommodation.
Still quite prone to the problem which is why I wear walking boots so much these days, even if I’m only walking about a mile. In the summer I like going barefoot around the garden but hot paving stones aren’t very good for it and I wonder if that’s a problem for you in your hot climate? I’d also recommend the gel insoles which are not so sweaty (which I think was partly what caused my blisters) if you put them UNDER the thin insoles that come with the shoes/boots.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
26/1/2018 10:37:30 am

I've only known (personally) two people who suffered Bell's palsy - both women - but two doesn't a research study make.
I haven't received any recommendations for my plantar fasciitis. I'll have to try the ice. This week I've had additional pain from my right big toe. Between my left heel and my right big toe, walking has been very painful. Fortunately Voltaren is reducing the toe pain. What a laugh - talking medical problems over the internet across the world. How bad can a pain in a big toe be? :) :)

Annecdotist
26/1/2018 04:34:42 pm

Strange where a book review and flash fiction takes us – as long as no-one mistakes this blog for a genuine medical forum I’m happy discussing ailments. So onto your big toe – could be gout perhaps? That can be extremely painful and doesn’t only affect port-swigging gentry. Not much fun when you can only hobble around.

Charli Mills
23/1/2018 01:39:56 am

This is convincing enough for me to read Kintu: "His analogy of Frankenstein-like surgery for European colonisation and subsequent denigration of Africa should be required reading for everyone in the West." So much of what ails the US right now is directly related to our founding on the backs of African slaves and indentured women. Interesting that the second book has a disturbed protagonist like yours in Underneath. It's not common is it? Oh, the bedevilment of planar fasciitist. My daughter who dances has this chronic foot injury. She took several of her students to a dance conference in Minneapolis this weekend and forgot her special dance shoes with the insoles. She dance barefoot all weekend and iced each night. I imagine getting blisters only adds insult to injury!

Reply
Annecdotist
26/1/2018 04:27:41 pm

It’s only a small part, Charli, but it really made me think. It also reminded me of an otherwise lovely holiday in Namibia where staying at a farm B&B with an otherwise lovely white farmer but struggling to respond to his racist assumption that his black workers were inherently lazy. After reading Kintu, I’d be better equipped to respond!
I didn’t think about a dancer suffering from plantar fasciitis, but of course they’re prone to his feet in all kinds of ways. And dancing shoes have such thin soles. Hope those insoles help your daughter. It’s so sad when the things we love lead to physical ailments. (Might be a metaphor for life!)

Reply



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