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Cold War Progressives: Women's Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom

Jacqueline Castledine

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In recognizing the relation between gender, race, and class oppression, American women of the...

Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction

Kathryn Gin Lum

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Among the pressing concerns of Americans in the first century of nationhood were day-to-day...

ClareR (5733 KP) rated The Book of Echoes in Books

Dec 4, 2020

The Book of Echoes

Rosanna Amaka | 2020 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry

10.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

The Book of Echoes has left me with a serious book hangover. It’s a hard book to follow. All three of the narrative voices in this book grab your heart and squeeze it - hard! Michael who lives in Brixton has a normal South London upbringing, living on a housing estate with his stepmother, sister and brother. When his brother kills his stepmother, his life takes a completely different direction as he steps in to care for his sister.

Ngozi lives in Nigeria, and we pick up as she transitions from being an orange seller to a house girl. Her life is changed forever when a house burglary goes terribly wrong. Her life takes many twists and turns, and she is determined to make something of her life.

The third voice is that of a female African slave, as she follows her children centuries after her death. She recounts the story of her life and death as well. I found this and Ngozi’s story particularly fascinating, as their stories are so very far removed from my own experience - so is Michael’s, to be honest.

This is a story of poverty, racism and the determination to change your life and break free from the expectations that others have of you. Ngozi is an ‘osu’, an outcast, and she makes a success of her life against all the odds. Michael makes a mistake and society makes him pay for it - wrongly in his case, but again, he’s determined to turn his life around. However the unnamed female slave never managed to live the life she wanted. Slave traders took that opportunity away from her - but she is still filled with hope for her ‘children’ through the generations.

I thought the ending of this book was perfect for all three characters, and I still think of this book a week after I finished it. I think it will be one of those books that will stay with me.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole for serialising this very special book.