I'm getting into a bad habit with not finishing books, but I found this book really challenging and it didn't interest me enough for it to be an enjoyable challenge; it was just a chore. I'm not familiar at all with African politics, and I don't think Adichie really had that sort of audience in mind when writing 'Half of a Yellow Sun' - again, perhaps if I had engaged with her characters on a more personal level, or found the narrative more interesting, then this would have been a great opportunity for me to learn about another culture like I did with 'The Kite Runner'. But all I felt was exclusion via the foreign politics, culture and history. I'm sure there were some explanations in there somewhere, admittedly I know more about the Nigerian Civil War now than I did before I started, but it wasn't sufficient or explicit enough for me to truly empathise with what I was reading as a complete outsider to the book's themes.

I do, however, greatly admire Adichie's prose. Her descriptions were vivid and original with some really stunning metaphors. I was gripped by her imagery by the first page, although later I think this poetic style of writing became a downfall. For example, the incessant descriptions of graphic, violent or harrowing events eventually became a kind of routine; I expected bad things to happen and I expected bad things to be described in detail. Both these expectations pretty quickly led to me being unaffected emotionally or intellectually, and I lost interest.

Another praise-worthy aspect of her writing was her ability to create very human characters. Although I only really found myself forming an attachment to Richard (perhaps because he was almost as much of an outsider as I felt!) there's no denying she really developed her protagonists, however again (at least to where I got up to) this may have been another negative, in my opinion, as nothing bad ever seemed to happen directly to any of them - they only witnessed it, or someone they knew well or loved had something terrible happen to them which seems a bit idealistic considering the bloodshed on their doorsteps.

Had it been half the length, I think I could have finished and enjoyed it - as it was, the story just seemed stretched and stretched, and the unchronological parts switching between the early and late 60s didn't help me to follow Nigeria/Biafra's history or Adichie's convoluted narrative.