Strong potential in near future Nigerian/American family tensions of over fame and disability, Chicago and African settings, interwoven with a further out robot society facing human-like challenges of witnessing cataclysm. And large parts, especially the more painful, feel like and are author-memoir. So disappointing to dislike most of the characters and their overall arcs, through accident and levels of seeking independence.
This was a really interesting book, and I think it's one where I kinda blame the blurb for messing up my reading of it. The basic premise is that a Nigerian-American woman, down on her luck, writes a book about robots in a post human future that ends up becoming a huge international success (not a spoiler, literally part of the blurb). But then the blurb says "something strange begins to happen", which made me expect something supernatural or magical realism-ish to happen, and I kept expecting, and kept expecting, but it didn't come. Because that's not really the type of book this is. It's really just a book about this woman's experience of life and family, and navigating the world with a disability. It is a beautiful book. I love it, and I think I want to try listening to it again sometime later with this mentality. I won't …
This was a really interesting book, and I think it's one where I kinda blame the blurb for messing up my reading of it. The basic premise is that a Nigerian-American woman, down on her luck, writes a book about robots in a post human future that ends up becoming a huge international success (not a spoiler, literally part of the blurb). But then the blurb says "something strange begins to happen", which made me expect something supernatural or magical realism-ish to happen, and I kept expecting, and kept expecting, but it didn't come. Because that's not really the type of book this is. It's really just a book about this woman's experience of life and family, and navigating the world with a disability. It is a beautiful book. I love it, and I think I want to try listening to it again sometime later with this mentality. I won't spoil why the blurb thought those words were appropriate, it's truly best to put the book in your queue, forget why you put it there, and read it without the blurb. Buy the book and scribble over the blurb with sharpy.
