"Without our parents' stories about their childhoods in a clean Kosawa, their days spent swimming in rivers that ran clear, how would my friends and I have known that the sporadic smokiness that enveloped the village and left our eyes watery and noses runny wasn't an ordinary occurrence in the lives of other children our age?"
★★★★⋆
A small village in Africa, Kosowa is shaken when a large oil company is given permission by their government to drill on their land. As time passes, the crops begin to fail, the water becomes polluted, and the air becomes hard to breathe. How Beautiful We Were tells the story of Kosowa through the eyes of its residents, particularly Thula and her family and age-mates.
The story of Kosawa is beautifully told. The writing is gorgeous and evokes so much emotion when reading, and the mix of language as the story changes narrater is absolutely masterful. I adored hearing from the different points of view, people of all ages and genders within the village, which really made it a whole and complete story.
The story matter is incredibly hard hitting, it opened my eyes to things that happen in the world that I had very little knowledge of. It made me want to read more, learn more, and really absorb more real stories of the subject matter so that I could better appreciate this fictional novel.
I do have one tiny gripe - I am the kind of person that loves a fast paced novel, and this is the opposite. Not only is it slow-paced, but the subject matter makes it hard to read, which slowed me down a lot. Now, and this is absolutely personal preference, I do think this affected my enjoyment of the book. I totally understand that this story needed to be told in a certain way, and I appreciated it for what it was, but I did sometimes have to struggle through because of the pacing. I also think it is a little jumpy in places, and this was a little hard to follow until I got the timeline straight in my head.
Nevertheless, this is a fantastic novel, and one I'll be recommending to so many people.
Thank you to Imbolo Mbue, Canongate, and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
CW: death, murder, abduction, unexplained disappearances, gun violence, violence, mentions of rape, genocide/mass murder/massacre
Buy this book on Hive, Bookshop.org, Blackwells, or Waterstones, or your local!
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