Sexual Coming of Age

This tenderly written book explores the meaning of identity, friendship and love. Although the title and opening scene let's you know that the protagonist is brutally murdered, the book also deals with topics such as adultery, incest, and bigamy. It also contains explicit sexual content. ( )

A beautifully written tragedy that explores the mystery and secrets surrounding the death of a young man whose life itself was shrouded in secrets kept from his overbearing mother and distant father. ( )

3.5? I think this was good but I felt frustrated how the title character is obscured from their own story. There's a sort of narrative reason for this with a reveal at the end but not only is everything we see of them from an outside perspective, even that is frustratingly minimal. In the end they feel boiled down to one characteristic that's treated as part of a twist ending even though it's really not that surprising. At the same time the relationships and inner lives of the characters we spend more time with also feel frustratingly opaque. There's one chapter that's about a bystander that gives an entire life story, explaining everything about where he's at and his actions and he's only relevant due to witnessing something. Yet we never really get a feel for why any of the other major characters are friends with the title character even. People have relationships but there's no sign of why, they just happen. To an extent this is obviously a narrative choice - when telling a story from after someone has died, what warps the world of the people left behind is their absence, and we're experiencing some of that. It's just... maybe this is me personally relating to the title character too hard and emotionally, but I really wanted somehow for the narrative to do justice to them, to let them speak, to let them be, to let them be fully formed, not an absence. It's not that it's a bad book in any way at all, it's just. Personally I struggled with that. ( )

4.5 stars rounded up

I loved this!

It read a bit jumpy and at times it was difficult to remember which character we were reading from, but the way this was told was amazing! Vivek was my favorite character, I really felt for him, and couldn't wait to find out what happened to him. ( )

Reason read: Bookclub (WC) for August 2023.
A story set in Nigeria that features young people during the 80s and 90s who grapple with sexual identity, parent-child relationships, and death written by a nonbinary, transgender author.
It has received a fair amount of attention and has been long and short listed. It was a finalist for the Dublin Literary Award. The plot is nonlinear and you really receive the climax in the first sentence. The characters are a bunch of young adults, children of Nigerian fathers and Nigerwives (non-Nigerian women) who find support from each other. I enjoyed the book in general, there is sexual and gender issues but that is one of the themes of the book. Rating 2.7 stars of C- ( )