Amma is anxious. Tonight is the opening of her newest play, and although she’s been doing this for years, she’s never before opened in the National Theatre. This feels so much more colossal, so more auspicious than anything else she’s undertaken. She thinks back to her modest beginnings, when she partnered with Dominique, an independent, creative woman like herself with ambitious dreams and a personality to match. And she thinks about all the people who will be there for her. And we will meet many of these people as the book unfolds, and we will hear each of their stories unwind through the pages as they all wind back to Amma.
Everything about this book is unique.
The writing is almost without punctuation, written as if it is one, very long, run-on, but poetic sentence. However, it is divided by starting new lines,
very
strategically.
While I admit this took a bit of getting used to at first, I found it worked – and actually made the writing extremely powerful.
Most of the characters are women of color, often of mixed heritage, and often identify as LGBTQI – and each is given a deeply vivid story to tell. While most experience racism of some kind, they confront it in many different ways, and most finding a way to either rise above or cut right through. There are many characters – and to be honest, I did find it sometimes hard to keep track of them all – but each had her/their beauty, each was sympathetic in some way, and each was was someone you came to think of as an actual, tactile person.
It is easy to see how this book won the Booker Prize in 2019, as it is beautifully composed, with gorgeous characters and with a memorable round of stories to tell. It will keep you glued and it will warm your heart.
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