From Publishers Weekly
Although her characters speak in authentic patois and authoritatively convey the grim travails of a dysfunctional emigre family in England, Emecheta's novel is sapped by polemic and an overkill of disaster. When her mother joins her father in London, Gwendolen is left behind in Jamaica, where she is sexually abused by a male friend of her grandmother; disclosure of her crime only brings the child resentment and ridicule. Eventually, Gwendolen's parents send for her, and she arrives in the "Moder Kontry" to care for her younger siblings and receive an education. But school is a hardship: "What nobody realized was the price her dignity as a person was paying. Those who made society's laws are still a long way from knowing that Gwendolen's inability to speak or understand one brand of the English language did not automatically condemn her to be an imbecile. But to keep a school like hers running smoothly and with less friction for all concerned, it was easier for her to be regarded as one." Further humiliations follow when Gwendolen's father molests her, rages when he learns he is not the first to do so, and eventually impregnates her. A Nigerian native living in England, Emecheta wrote The Joys of Motherhood.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In Emecheta's latest novel, complex societal, moral, and emotional issues are played out through the life of young Gwendolen Brillianton. We meet her at age six in a Jamaican mountain village as her father emigrates to London and say good-bye at a triumphant age 16 after she's fought for survival and identity through a sequence of cruel events that include subjugation, rape, and incest. Her family's need to escape economic poverty has led to a new poverty--a moral malaise within a dissociated nuclear family. However awkward the narrative structure may appear, Emecheta is here exploring new territory. Her narrator, unlike its dispassionate Western counterpart, takes an active role by commenting on events and stating opinions--a practice evolving out of the oral tradition of the African griot that is also reminiscent of the Greek chorus in Western literary tradition. A native of Nigeria who has lived in England since 1962, Emecheta is the author of several novels, including The Rape of Shavi ( LJ 3/1/85). Her newest is a fine addition to any library.
- Veronica Mitchell, New York
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
- Veronica Mitchell, New York
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
