The Fishermen by Chigozie ObiomaMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I realise I am in the minority when I say I didn't like this book nor understand it. Perhaps it's because I am truly not so literary as to read between the poetic text and dig out its meaty essence.
While I cannot fault the author's unwavering ability to imbue the English language text with a traditional African feel, the story itself with its overly explicit scenes of.... bodily functions was too much to take in. I guess I just like my stories a tad more sanitised.
The brotherly relationship at the heart of the story was true to life and definitely kept this book afloat. It was deeply affecting how one callous act ends up destroying a bond that all the characters in the story would have believed unbreakable.
The author does make the story overly tragic, which, at times, felt unbelievable. I'm not saying people don't face inordinate amounts of tragedy, but it felt a bit like the Agwu family couldn't ever catch a break. Seriously harsh punishment for such a benign bunch of people.
At the time of writing, this book has been shortlisted for the Booker 2016 prize. Will it win? Can it? Part of me believes it was chosen, selected, purely for its otherness - it would be rather novel for the majority of the regular Booker reading audiences. Maybe I'm just cynical, but this book just didn't work for me. The writing style may have been poetic, but it's insistence on getting down and dirty, sometimes I felt, needlessly, made it unreadable at times.
Maybe I'm just the wrong kind of audience for it.
View all my reviews
Comments