Still Waters in Niger

by Kathleen Hill

A New York Times Notable Book for 1999
Best Fiction of 1999, the Los Angeles Times Book Review
Starred review, Publishers Weekly 
Finalist for 1998 Dublin IMPAC Literary Award The narrator of this book is an Irish-American woman who returns to the West African country of Niger where she had lived seventeen years earlier as the wife of an academic and the mother of three young daughters. Now she is visiting her eldest daughter, Zara, who has herself returned to Africa during a season of devastating drought and is working in a village clinic that cares for women and children suffering from starvation. Still Waters in Niger is a beautifully observed account of a return to a place at once exotic and familiar, as well as a tale of inner discovery. As the narrator reacquaints herself with her daughter and with the Africa of her past, she meets other mothers and their children. With her own memories of young motherhood strong, she becomes aware of the strikingly similar ways in which the impassioned and often difficult bonds between mothers and daughters are revealed across the divide of cultures. Hill paints a compelling portrait of a community of women grounded in kinship and care for their children, a society characterized not only by pain and exhaustion but by humor, delicacy, and strength. Filled with vivid, elegant descriptions and meditations on hunger, poverty, the desert, women, memory, and the love between mothers and daughters, Still Waters in Niger is the haunting story of a woman looking simultaneously backward and forward.

Genres: Africa, Fiction, Niger

206 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 1999

Reviews

[Amrutha Prasad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve never read something that romanticized poverty and looks at infant mortality due to malnutrition with such white privilege, selfishness, and unwillingness to see past oneself. Add in the comparisons between the lived experience of those in rural Niger to those in Ireland and this comes off as tone deaf and grossly pretentious.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I may as well come to terms with the fact that there is no way I'll be finishing this book. It seems like some sort of event happened in the past that is heavily hinted at in a number of ways, most of all the narrator's somewhat shell-shocked demeanor (though I could be wrong about that given there's basically little to no plot). That would be okay if there were a successful build up of suspense or enough to keep me engaged, but I just find it completely flat.

[Megan Lade · Rating 1 out of 5]

Felt like this was reading a diary but not a juicy one that you want to find all the secrets. It was just descriptions of the things she saw without any further investigation.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been on my to-be-read list forever. I bought it about 8 years ago when on a college visit to my son and found it in the bookstore - Hill taught at the school where I was visiting. It's a s much travel log as novel - a woman visits her adult daughter in the small Niger village where she herself lived as a new mother. There are lots of descriptions of land, trees, water, and modes of travel and introspective moments about maternity, mothering, and famine. Hill draws connections between the Irish famine of the 1840s and the Niger periods of food scarcity that didn't always land but were interesting to think about. I thought the writing was really beautiful but ymmv, I could also see someone finding it pretentious and a little heavy handed.

[Carmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

For an instant, all roads are forgotten: the road of yesterday vanishing south to the Bight of Benin; the road of tomorrow flung further an further into the desert; even the road of today, rushing always and at last to Zinder, city of winds and wheeling vultures, of rocks of shimmering in the heat. All forgotten, in some reverie of still waters waiting in darkness.

[Annm · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing examination of memory, regret and motherhood.

[Kylie · Rating 2 out of 5]

read around the world Niger
very white savior-y but beautifully written

[Evan Goosmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was interested by the exploration of the theme of inherent envy of one’s children, and not much else.

[Rhonda Hankins]

The narrator of this work of fiction is a very timid soul who constantly seeks out ways to be nervous and uncomfortable and petty. A long paragraph or two about the unspoken insinuations she infers from a stranger's comment about how her daughter speaks the foreign language better than she does. Much trepidation at being alone in her daughter's place because she fears imagining her daughter living there. Heavy nuances of mystery at her daughter's every twitch of the eyelid.

I'm sorry the narrator is such a bundle of insecurities. She might have a really interesting story to tell, I don't know, she dwells on perceived slights and banal imagined imaginings so much that it's really hard to sustain an interest in reading this book.

If you're interested in getting into the head of someone who lives her life afraid of everyday interactions, I suppose this could be a good read.

I got it because I'm interested in learning something about the culture of Niger and I guess this work has succeeded in impressing on me the intensity of the heat and reinforced some of the basic things I understood to be true such as the tradition of arranged marriages and the extreme poverty that accompanies the droughts so it served that purpose to some extent.

[Wavelength · Rating 3 out of 5]

The narrator has returned to Niger to visit her daughter Zara, and revisit the country she left seventeen years ago. The first images are of poverty and disease. Two children begging; a one-legged boy on crutches, and a girl who moves by dragging herself through the sand using wooden blocks. That was the first and last time I felt a part of the events. Throughout the book, the narrator seemed to view everything from a distance...she feels distant with her daughter, she feels distant from her past, she never felt connected with Niger. I thought her honesty about a first pregnancy and the fear of losing self was brave. Her explanation of the bond between mothers was beautifully written. As a whole, the book didn't come together.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prose in this book is rich and lyrical. It's enjoyable just for that. There is not much plot, but the mother-daughter dynamic is explored in several vignettes. A fascinating journey through a foreign land.

[Kevin Pedersen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lyrical, melancholy, a lot of really powerful descriptions of heat and famine, and good insights into the relationships between mothers and daughters.

But it's not a story and it has no characters, really. It's almost a poem.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 3.5-4 for this story of a mother who returns to Africa to repair the relationship with her daughter.

[Bobbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

NY times most notable list of 1999