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You won’t soon forget Dorothy or her delicious insights, but fair warning: This book might turn you into a vegetarian, if you aren’t already. (Though as Dorothy herself acknowledges, “It’s surprisingly easy to overcome moral qualms, if you give in to the appetite.”)
In this persuasive novel, Thula is a powerful if ultimately doomed heroine, and Mbue makes it clear that Goliath will always defeat David in a postcolonial society ruled by greed, corruption, and untrammeled capitalism.
Though some of the stories feel overly experimental and some retellings work better than others, this reenvisioning of Ovid’s immortal work offers passages of unforgettable beauty and much strength in the voices of women trying to become themselves.
Not all of Patchett’s characters, particularly Maeve, are fully developed or believable, perhaps because of the narrator’s own limited powers of observation; Danny more than once acknowledges his own lazy inattention to the people who care for him. Still, this is an affecting family drama that explores the powerful tug of nostalgia and the exclusionary force of shared resentments
For sophisticated readers, this novel offers an insightful and haunting portrait into a disintegrating mind, featuring visceral descriptions of a girl’s self-loathing and self-destructive behaviors. Yet the difficult subject matter is tempered by the wisdom of the adult author and, for the reader, the knowledge that she has made it through to the other side.