Changes

Obinna's childhood had been gloriously happy, living in the Nigerian village with Mama. But when he was fifteen years old Mama told him that she was not his mother, but his grandmother and that his mother and father were dead. Stunned and almost disbelieving he went to bed only to be woken by a loud noise in the night. It came from Mama's room but when Obinna went to her she was dead on the floor. The boy could have lived with neighbours who would have been only too glad to have him, but he set off as soon as he could to his only living relative, his Uncle Raffia.

There's a real sense of Nigeria in this book. Celine Ibe draws on her childhood in a rural village in Igbo land and she brings the area vividly to life, but manages to do it so well by showing us the countryside rather than describing it. I had a real feeling for the extremes of the climate and the beauty of the landscape. She's particularly good with the life the villagers live, but not quite so good with the characters themselves. Obinna, for instance, is a staunch and intelligent young man, but seems to have an almost wilful inability to understand the reality of any situation. There were occasions when I felt as though I was at a pantomime and ought to be shouting a warning to him.