Half of a Yellow Sun in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Feb 06, 2015 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 100-best-of-21st-c, fiction, 1001-books, all-time-favorites, literary-schmiterary

I feel like this book has changed me some how. I'm not sure how. I mean, it's not possible to have travelled through this universe of sun, cashew trees, jollof rice, confusion, chin-chin, hope, idealism, garri, war, starvation, refuge camps, and red dusty roads, and not emerge on the other end without having been changed in some ways. Ms Adiche's writing is so natural, so seemingly effortless, that I would fall right in, as if falling into a pool and sinking to the bottom; but I never felt the s I feel like this book has changed me some how. I'm not sure how. I mean, it's not possible to have travelled through this universe of sun, cashew trees, jollof rice, confusion, chin-chin, hope, idealism, garri, war, starvation, refuge camps, and red dusty roads, and not emerge on the other end without having been changed in some ways. Ms Adiche's writing is so natural, so seemingly effortless, that I would fall right in, as if falling into a pool and sinking to the bottom; but I never felt the sensation, and when I set the book down, stood up, walked to the bathroom or answered the phone ... I would be startled to find myself at my desk, in a world with electricity and plenty of food and no war planes overhead.

I don't want to make this sound like a war story. It's not. It is the story of people, and they happened to live during war time and so yes parts of it are the story of the Biafran War.

Each chapter alternates between three main characters: Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard. I'll let the book blurb describe each of these people, since it does it better than I could. Ugwu and Richard were fine, but the character that really resonated with me was Olanna. I don't know if that's because Ms Adiche is a young Nigerian woman also, or if its because I am a woman, or something else entirely.

I found the occassional descriptions of another book being written to be distracting, but towards the end I understood better what the author was trying for with those.

During Ugwu's chapters, I often felt myself wondering, "is that really how someone like Ugwu would feel?" ... he comes across as a hopeless sychophant, and rather small-minded, and really rather unlikeable. Richard seemed far too spineless and unmoored and unknowable, and I often wondered why the author had included him at all (and I sometimes had the distinct impression that the author did not actually like the character she had created). But in Olanna's chapters, I really felt what she felt, I saw what she saw. (I loved the frequent appearances of her twin, the prickly Kainene, as well). That's not to say that I didn't enjoy Richard's chapters or Ugwu's chapters, I did. But I also felt myself to be at a remove from them, as if in the presence of "the Other," and never quite sure how to really feel, if they are being sincere or trustworthy.

I am not Nigerian, but the cadence of the Igbo pidgin is familiar to me, and it often came through crystal clear in the dialogue, and would make me smile. There is a saying, to describe a hangover, that I kept expecting one of the characters to say: my head, oh! my belly, oh!

And yes, this is a story of three different people during wartime, but the unifying theme throughout is not war, but belonging. Richard worries that he will never find a place or family to belong, he worries that Kainene thinks he doesn't belong, and he desperately wants to be part of Biafra from the beginning, so he will finally have a place to belong. Ugwu wants to belong to his Master and jealously guards him from interlopers. And Olanna spends the book searching for where to belong: so many options open to her, but she never feels she really belongs in Odenigbo's circle of intellectuals, and she doesn't realize that she is the glue that holds everyone together.

This book fulfills the "written by someone under 30" category of the 2015 Ultimate Reading Challenge. ...more

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May 13, 2020 Julianne Dunn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book officially puts Chiamamanda Ngozi Adichie on my list of authors that I will read whenever they publish. I loved Americanah and this one is just as amazing. It took me just a few chapters to get used to the changing narrative perspective but I can not see how she could have told this story without all these voices. The story weaves personal challenges within the larger context of the escalating violence in the country. I loved Ugwu but it's not possible to not love Olanna and Richard as ...more

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Dec 07, 2014 Kara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

This book had me totally absorbed in the characters' lives. My favorite I read this year. ...more

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Mar 20, 2017 Kate added it

Shelves: audiobook

I'm having a hard time rating this book as I listened to it as an audio book. I think it could have been 100 pages shorter, and the overall structure (early 60s, late 60s, back to early 60s, back to late 60s) I think would have been easier to follow on the written page. Adichie says that she was inspired to make the characters driven by impulses but not analyze them, and I thought that was well done. ...more

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Mar 15, 2020 Ruth rated it really liked it

Masterful, epic, beautiful. Read the first half on a hard copy borrowed from the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo, second half on the plane home as an ebook.

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