Reason Read: ANC, Kenya

Peter Kimani was born in Kenya in 1971. I really enjoyed this work and I think the author was able to bring out issues in a natural way so that it never felt preachy or judgmental. It is historical fiction and explores his country’s colonial past and its legacy through the stories of three men involved with the building of a railroad linking Lake Victoria and the Indian Ocean — what the Kikuyu called the ‘Iron Snake’ and the British called the ‘Lunatic Express.’” I think this is a debut novel but it is very good and I am glad I read it. ( )

A frustrating read that missed the mark in every possible way for me. This take on colonial and post-colonial Kenya should have been riveting but the characters were too cartoonish and the scenes too sketchy to really capture my attention. The satire didn't work for me either. There are limp forays into Midnights-Children-Land whimsy--for instance Babu's comically high forehead makes a repetitive motif not unlike Saleem Sinai's memorable nose--but they don't easily relate to a greater theme and so feel tacked-on and distracting. And listen, I am somewhat outraged at the treatment of women characters in the novel--from the anonymous, sexualized kiss in a dark hallway, to a young wife becoming a crippled invalid by sitting too long in one position on her harrowing journey to Kenya, to--and this really took the cake--the ludicrous, hmm, dare I say offensive? ok i did--treatment of Sally, who expresses her discomfort about colonialism by sleeping with her black gardener as atonement. There are just too many layers of irony there for this event to work. The writing isn't good enough for me to give the author benefit of the doubt that he is deliberately exposing Sally's hypocrisy in the way she exploits a man who is economically dependent on her, all the while thinking she is atoning. The scene is treated like a frivolous adventure to set up her husband McDonald's story arc, once he witnesses Sally's unfaithfulness directly and viscerally. There is no real human feeling in that scene--I felt sorry for these three fictional creations on the page, for the shabby way the author treated them.

I came away from this novel believing that satirical writing must have a bedrock-solid unmoving core of moral rightness, so that the reader knows very clearly where the author stands and can therefore place even the most outrageous and potentially offensive scenes into the right context. This book doesn't have that core of moral rightness, or at least, I couldn't find it. ( )

“History has strange ways of announcing itself to the present, whether conceived in comforting darkness or blinding light. It can manifest with the gentleness of a bean cracking out of its pod, making music in its fall. Even when such seed falls into fertile soil, it still wriggles from the tug of the earth, stretching a green hand for uplift.”

I really enjoyed this one for a lot of reasons and this quote seems to sum up a lot of the plot strands. I’ve been reading a lot in Africa these days, experiencing the colonial experience from both the side of the colonized and the colonizers. This one was even more convoluted because the main protagonist is neither, at least in Kenya. Babu is also a victim of imperialism, however, as he is a Punjabi imported by the British to help build the railroad in Kenya with promise of making a fortune and returning home. Unfortunately, “home” goes away with the partitioning of British Punjab between India and Pakistan. So there’s that historical strand of an Imperial power shifting people and ethnic groups around, playing them off each other, and then abandoning them after their work is done.

Then there is the personal side of history, where the secrets and shenanigans of the grandfathers and fathers come back to haunt the children. Or as they say in Kenya, “Majuto ni mjukuu...children would pay for the sins of their forebearers.”

Finally, the Jakaranda’s patio and lounge sounded very, very similar to the Lake Nakuru lodge I stayed at during a photo safari several years ago. The descriptions were so similar that I did a quick check to see if I could find any evidence that there was some connection between the two.

As to the writing, this multi-generational novel was oft times confusing and seemed to meander and eventually putter out in a dramatic but not very well fleshed out finale. Like much of the books published these days, it probably could have used some stronger editorial influence and guidance. This was more evident at the end than in the beginning and middle sections, so maybe there was a deadline that caused Kimani to wrap it up a little too abruptly. In the end, I still enjoyed much of the book and especially appreciated yet another view into the development of Kenya as a country. If that is something that interests you, I would invite you to check this one out.

“The gigantic snake was a train and the year was 1901, an age when white men were still discovering the world for their kings and queens in faraway lands. So when the railway superintendent, or simply Master as he was known to many, peered out the window of his first class cabin that misty morning, his mind did not register the dazzled villagers who dropped their hoes and took off, or led their herds away from the grazing fields in sheer terror of the strange creature cutting through their land Neither did Master share in the 'tamasha' boom from across the coaches where British, Indian and African workers - all in their respective compartments – were celebrating the train's maiden voyage. Master was absorbed by the landscape that looked remarkably different from how he remembered it from his previous trip.” p 2

This historical novel written by Kenyan author Peter Kimani, depicts several key points in Kenyan history. Time periods alternate between the telling of the building of the railroad under the sometimes brutal colonial white rule, to the early 60's when Kenya became a self-ruling nation under the “Big Man”.

We see the stories of African workers , the white master in charge of building the railroad named Ian McDonald , a white missionary John Turnbull, , and the Indians who came to Kenya to work on the railway, and who stayed on, often because their country Punjabi disappeared into India and Pakistan and they had no country to return if they wanted to leave.

Ian McDonald, denied a title from the queen for his accomplishment of punching through the railway, is instead given his choice of a thousand acres of land. He chooses a prime location, between two natural wonders. His estate is known as Jakaranda ; and it evolves through many incarnations – from baronial estate and ambitious farmland, to wildlife preserve, hunting preserve for rich whites, and a night club where we see a musician grandson or one of the original railway workers .

As the estate changes, so also do the people in the story until their stories are not separate but intertwine in often secret ways.

Overall, I enjoyed this story although I did find the shifting time frames a bit confusing. Author Kimani paints an interesting story of the history of the country and the people. I definitely walk away with more knowledge of the region and respect for its multi-cultural past. ( )

This is another book I'm going to have to set aside for now. Hopefully I'll finish it soon but as of right now it's not doing "it" for me. I can't seem to get into it and I keep having to reread passages because my mind drifts away from the story quite easily. I thought I'd like it because I saw the blurb from Mat Johnson; I loved his satirical "Loving Day" and for some reason I thought this novel was going to be a biting satire as well. It's not. It's a somewhat slow, somewhat jumpy historical fiction so far. The writing is okay but nothing special. Maybe I'll be in the mood for it at another time.