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Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala
Jun. 19th, 2018 10:45 pmThe Blurb On The Back:
On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, DC, he’s a top student and an athletics star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is gay – an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except his best friend, Meredith – the one person who seems not to judge him.
When his father accidentally finds out, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding towards a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.
Speak No Evil is a novel about the power of words and self-identification, about who gets to speak and who has the power to speak for other people.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Uzodinma Iweala’s literary novel has a powerful opening third with Iweala carefully constructing the pressures that Niru feels as a black student in a predominantly white school contrasted with the expectations of his religious, high-achieving parents but the story loses intensity and becomes repetitive when Niru returns to America while the final third, where the focus switches to Meredith left too many unanswered questions to be satisfying.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, DC, he’s a top student and an athletics star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is gay – an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except his best friend, Meredith – the one person who seems not to judge him.
When his father accidentally finds out, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding towards a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.
Speak No Evil is a novel about the power of words and self-identification, about who gets to speak and who has the power to speak for other people.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Uzodinma Iweala’s literary novel has a powerful opening third with Iweala carefully constructing the pressures that Niru feels as a black student in a predominantly white school contrasted with the expectations of his religious, high-achieving parents but the story loses intensity and becomes repetitive when Niru returns to America while the final third, where the focus switches to Meredith left too many unanswered questions to be satisfying.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
