Hello, friends! Welcome back for another review. I don’t have any life updates this week since I’ve just been keeping busy teaching private lessons. But, one fun blog update is that I was recently tagged in a photo on Instagram where someone had made one of my cocktails for their book club. I was really excited about this (especially since they liked the drink), and I’d love to hear if anyone else has tried any of my drinks! So, feel free to message me to let me know if you have. Moving on to this week’s review, I’ll be reviewing Imbolo Mbue’s latest novel, How Beautiful We Were. To accompany the novel I’ll be making a Basil Beauty, or Basil Beautiful for my title. Enjoy!
Basil Beauty Recipe
2oz Citron Vodka
2oz Pineapple Juice
0.25oz Lime Juice
0.5oz Mango Juice*
0.5oz Coconut Sugar Syrup
1 Passionfruit
~3 Basil Leaves
1 Pineapple Wedge
*Mango juice is an optional ingredient.
In an empty cocktail shaker, muddle basil leaves. (P.S. I used 3 basil leaves, but you could use more or less depending on how much you like basil.) Then, halve the passionfruit, add the pulp to the shaker, and muddle a little more. Next, add ice and all other ingredients, except the pineapple wedge, to the shaker and shake for approximately 10 seconds. Then finish it off by straining into a martini glass and garnishing with a wedge of pineapple.
For my special ingredient this week I used mango juice. While the novel focuses on many members of the village of Kosawa, one stood out to me—Konga. He is a really interesting character and is essentially the instigating force of the novel. The reason I chose mango to represent this pivotal character is because he lives under the mango tree. So, I figured it worked with the novel and would work really well in my drink.
And it did! This was a really yummy drink. It was nice and tropical and a bit sweet. I liked the taste of this one with and without the mango juice. I actually didn’t notice too much of a difference between the two, but Tom did. He preferred the drink with the mango juice because it “takes out the bite, but leaves a nice basil finish.” I swear he said those exact words, so interpret them how you feel. As always, the mango is optional for the cocktail, so try it how you want to!
How Beautiful We Were Synopsis
(from book cover)
Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, How Beautiful We Were tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.
Review
“We should have known the end was near.”
So begins Imbolo Mbue’s latest novel of oppression, injustice, and how the effects ripple across generations. This novel is quite beautiful. That first line draws you in to what becomes an enticing first page, first chapter, and beyond. For me, the writing shone the most in the first chapter and then, unfortunately, didn’t keep its same poetic tone. But, it never lost its message or its interesting narrative style.
The writing of this novel was hit and miss for me. As said previously, the first chapter had me in awe. It felt like reading spoken word poetry—in a good way. The way the narrative chorus echoes through the chapter and makes these big statements in such a delicate way is mesmerizing. And, though this chapter felt like spoken word poetry, I didn’t feel like I lost anything by reading it. If you’ve read my review of The Prophets, you may remember that I commented on how it would’ve been better in audiobook format and that I didn’t feel like I got as much out of reading it. Well, How Beautiful We Were, though it would also be great as an audiobook, didn’t have the same drawbacks from being read. It was still impactful and beautiful and the tone definitely still came through.
Beyond the first chapter is where it starts to miss for me. I found that the level of writing declined slightly through the rest of the novel. It definitely didn’t go from great writing to bad writing, but it lost some of its beauty. There were a few times when the writing even seemed cliché. It’s definitely a personal thing that I love writing that is poetic, which I know can’t be done through the entirety of the novel, but I was, nonetheless, a bit disheartened that it was only in one chapter. Since the narrators rotate, I thought perhaps it would get back to its beauty in “the children” chapters, but it sadly did not.
However, the narration is what stands out the most for me in this novel. Though we largely see from individual characters, one narrator is actually a group of children. And, I loved this. Having this chorus of children be a narrator is so unique and adds a lot of depth to the novel. There was also a special beauty in the “we” statements (we think, we see, we do, etc.) that enforced the notion that injustice affects everyone not just individuals. The other narrators were also interesting, though I didn’t find them quite as captivating.
The individual characters’ narration really reminded me of Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel. And what didn’t work for me in that novel did work for me in How Beautiful We Were. Specifically, both novels use multiple people and perspectives to follow one character. In The Glass Hotel, I found that having the main character’s life seen in glimpses from the other narratives didn’t work. I ended up losing the main character in a sea of names and stories. But, I never lost Thula in this one. This could be because the other narrators are her family members who, though they describe different times and stories, all connect into the larger story of Kosawa and Thula’s fight for her home.
Despite being able to follow Thula’s life, and through that the life of the other children and people of Kosawa, I never really connected to the characters, except maybe Bongo. Bongo, Thula’s uncle, had the most depth of all the characters and invoked the most compassion from me. Thula, on the other hand, felt one-dimensional and didn’t have much personality. Perhaps this is because of the narrative style, but I’m not sure that was the intention. Even during the sadder, darker parts of the novel I didn’t feel as much as I could have if I had been more invested in the characters. And that was really disappointing to me.
The first chapter actually did get me invested in the lives of the children, but as they grew older over the story I lost that connection. By the time they were adults all I could think was “why is their chapter still being called ‘the children’ when they have children of their own?” I guess I just expected the children chapter to adapt and still stay children. For me, it would have been more impactful to have the children of the original children take over the narrative. I know it would’ve been hard to have the exact same story that way, but I feel like a lot of the information in the children’s chapters could’ve been put into another character’s narrative (maybe Thula’s brother?).
I think a lot of the reason I feel this way is because this novel has a clear moral that I expected more from. The novel is relevant and has an important message, but I sometimes felt the message was being forced down my throat. In the first chapter, my favourite part, beyond the beautiful writing, was how the narrators being children reinforced in a lovely and subtle way that the repercussions of injustice last for generations. So, maybe I was wrong to look into it this way and get so invested in this idea, but because of this I felt that the chorus of children should’ve stayed children. And then kept changing into those children’s children and then those children’s children, too! I just love me some subtle yet impactful meaning, OK?
All of this rambling isn’t to say that I didn’t like the novel because I did like it. I just felt disappointed. And that truly could just be on me for expecting too much from such an amazing first chapter. But, I don’t know. The novel was well written and I liked the overall narrative style, so I can’t complain that much. But, unfortunately, the lack of depth to the characters combined with a bit of disappointment brings this one down in points for me.
Overall, How Beautiful We Were is an OK novel. I don’t think it’ll be topping any lists for me this year, but it’s definitely not near the bottom either. Just another novel sitting right in the middle for me. I want to reiterate before closing that a lot of my feelings about this novel are quite subjective, so if the synopsis is drawing you in and you don’t get your expectations too high like I did then you may enjoy this one more than me. I definitely recommend it to anyone who thinks it could be up their alley, but if you tend to agree with my reviews then this one may be just a maybe for you. Regardless, I definitely still recommend trying my tropical cocktail. If for nothing else, to pretend we’re all on the beach enjoying vacation instead of in a rainy lockdown right now.
My Rating:
Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment, on Instagram, or in person (if you know me). Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading The Vanishing Half and Half, The Kindest LIE, and How the One-Armed Sister Clean Sweeps Her House if you liked this one!
Teghann
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