American writer Zinzi Clemmons’s debut novel is about haunting. Like Clemmons, Thandi is half “Coloured” (a distinct ethnic group in South Africa) and a half African American. But the novel is best when it simply tells the story of Thandi’s mother’s struggle with cancer, and it is here that Clemmons’s restrained prose reaches its full potential. The matter-of-factness and plainness of the language heighten the emotional intensity of Thandi watching her mother die. At times, Clemmons’s restrained prose, so powerful when the narrative lens is up close on Thandi’s mother, distances us from characters the reader longs to know more about.

Source: The Guardian August 05, 2017 06:22 UTC