Purple Hibiscus (thoughts)

Originally, my Orbis Terrarum itinerary had me going from Egypt directly to South Africa. But when I saw a chance to take a sidetrip to Nigeria with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, I jumped for it! Last year, I read Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie’s second, Orange Prize winning, novel, and loved it. Ever since, I’m been meaning to read her debut, but my various libraries didn’t carry it. Fortunately, my shiny new library system did, and I immediately put it on hold, only to have to impatiently wait to climb up to the top of the list.

Here’s what’s funny about Adichie: when I hear the subject matter of her novels, I’d never in a million years read it. Half of a Yellow Sun dealt with a devastating civil war, and Purple Hibiscus deals with an abusive father. But somehow in Adichie’s hands, these topics that I usually avoid, become beautiful and irresistable. I think it helps that she obviously loves Nigeria a lot, and puts a very strong sense of place into her storytelling. She sprinkles Igbo, one of the tribal languages, throughout Purple Hibiscus (never enough to make things incomprehensible, though), which is one of my favourite novel-set-in-foreign-countries devices. She also really brings everyday life in Nigeria to the reader by discussing each sense, so you’ll have an idea of the tastes, sights, sounds, smells, and feel of the country. It’s just wonderful.

Purple Hibiscus is essentially a coming-of-age story. Our narrator, Kambili (stress on the first syllable) is a fourteen-year-old girl used to doing everything her father tells her. However, over the course of several months, she’s exposed to different ways of life and thinking that lead her to question her own lifestyle. Meanwhile, her older brother is having the same experience, only more extreme, and his new decisions begin to destroy the family (this all comes out in the prologue, so I’m not giving anything away). I don’t really want to go into more details, because I didn’t know anything going in and it was wonderful to see the story unfold (I couldn’t stop reading it). Suffice it say, all of the characters feel like real people; no one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs here. And Adichie’s style is just lyrical, as well as seeming perfectly like a fourteen-year-old girl. I don’t know how she does it, but she has the perfect touch for poignancy.

It’s funny; sometimes my favourite books are the ones I have the least to say about. So really, all I have is this: go read it. You’ll be happy you did.

Do you have a favourite international author, who through their descriptions really brings a country to life? Who?

Favourite Passages
Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved. Have a love sip, he would say, and Jaja would go first. Then I would hold the cup with both hands and raise it to my lips. One sip. The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue, and if lunch was something peppery my raw tongue suffered. But it didn’t matter, because I knew that when the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa’s love into me.

She spoke the way a bird eats, in small amounts.

But I told the doctor it was as bad as before and I screamed when he tried to feel my side. I did not want to leave the hospital. I did not want to go home.