The Dark Child by Camera Laye

[Kristel]

Read 2015

This is a good book, a memoir, Camara Laye tells us about his youth in Guinea. He shares with us the culture, family structure, spirituality of his people and his trip towards his own destiny. He wrote this book when he was in his twenties and studying engineering in France. He died in Senegal in 1980.

[Gail]

Camara Laye's first book written while he was still in university in Paris, is a tale of growing up in Guinea and is largely autobiographical. I can imagine in a cold, strange land writing about his homeland would be a warmth and a comfort.
What makes this book such a joy is the way Camara (the family name in Guinea is the first name, Laye is his given name), brings such wonderful measured language to describe with fullness and dignity, his family and friends. The beautiful physical world and the spiritual world he shares with his readers, stand side by side in an honest telling. This is neither fantasy or hyperbole, it is simply the world of upper Guinea. Camara tells of his coming of age with all its problems, both those unique to Guinea and those common to all young men everywhere and I truly felt the fear and the joy of this maturing through ritual and relationships. Ultimately, Camara depicts a world in which the African people live and work together in an intimate harmony and in which the white world is far away and of no importance until the desire for opportunity and education pull him away.
4 stars

[Patrick]

Pre-2016 review:

***

A coming-of-age novel, outlining how it was to grow up as a boy in Guinea back in the 30s and 40s. There were several little interesting aspects to this novel, such as the combination of traditional rites within an Islamic environment. But in terms of novels addressing the passage from a colonial/tribal state to the integration into a "civilized"/occidental society, I think that Achebe and Dangaremgba were much better. Cute, but not really exciting.