REVIEW: NIGHTS OF THE CREAKING BED

Author: Toni Kan

Genre: Fiction

My Rating: 3.5 Stars

Number of Pages: 166

Year of Publication: 2008

SUMMARY
Nights of the Creaking Bed is full of colourful characters involved in affecting dramas: a girl who is rejected in love, because she has three brothers to look after; a middle aged housewife who finds love again but has an impossible decision to make; a young man who can't get the image of his naked, beautiful mother out of his mind; a child so poor he has to hawk onions on Christmas day - and many others. Some, initially full of hope, find their lives blighted by the cruelty of others, or by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or by just not knowing the 'right' people.

Corruption, religious intolerance, gratuitous violence, the irresponsible attitudes of some men to their offspring and the importance of joy are some of the big themes that underlie this memorable collection.

MY VERDICT
A collection of 14 short stories on love, lust, corruption, death, sorrow etc. I absolutely enjoyed the Nigeiran setting, coupled with the Author's choice of words. I liked how some of the stories covered numerous themes and had some humour in them, in the presence of all that sorrow.
Some of my favourite stories out of the 14 were; the devil's overtime, Buzz, the phone call goodnight and the car they borrowed.
I liked the stories, but some of them were too rawly or rather explicitly written (my opinion)
All in all, it was a nice read that got me shocked, sad, angry and laughing all at the same time .
You can acquire the book at www.amazon.com (i'm too lazy to put the direct link lol )

PS: The blog now has an instgram account, check it out xx
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THE FULANI CREATION STORY

Right from the moment Mr.Salami -my social studies teacher in year 8- taught us about religion and what different ethnic groups in Nigeria believe the true creation story is ;according to their norms and traditional orientation. I took a particular interest in one story , which was The Fulani peoples' story. I guess my reason was because it was so different from all the other stories. I was captivated by how they incorporated different elements of life ; how it was presented in poem form ,but it isn't a poem lol. Let me spare you the detail . Here is a brief history of the Fulanis , for those who aren't too familiar with who they are and what part of Nigeria they hail from. Fulani, people of Africa numbering about 7 million and dispersed in varying, often sizable, concentrations throughout the grassland areas of West Africa from Senegal and Guinea to Nigeria , Cameroon, and Chad. Their Fulfulde language is closely related to the languages of

REVIEW: A COWRIE OF HOPE

Author : Binwell Sinyangwe My Rating : 3 Stars Genre : Fiction/ Literature Year Published : 2000 ISBN : 9780435912024 Number of Pages : 152 Date Read : 03/12/2017 SUMMARY 'These were the nineties,' reflects the narrator of A Cowrie of Hope , and for the young widow Nasula they are years of relentless economic hardship and privation. She dreams of a better life for her beautiful daughter, Sula, free from poverty and independent of marriage. But when Nasula finds herself unable to pay for Sula's education, her hopes seem to have been extinguished - until a friend advises her to go to Lusaka and sell her last sack of highly sought-after Mbala beans. Nasula makes the journey, but in the city she finds herself exposed to new, and predatory, dangers. MY THOUGHTS The author's writing style was pretty basic. The plot was kind of predictable, nothing mind-blowing, but pretty decent. I especially loved how the story gave me Joys of Motherhood vibes.

REVIEW: BLACKASS

Author : A. Igoni Barrett Genre : Fiction | Satire My Rating : 4.5 Stars Year of Publication : 2015 Number of Pages : 302 SUMMARY Furo Wariboko- born and bred in Lagos - wakes up on the morning of his job interview to discover he has turned into a white man. As he hits the city streets running, still reeling from his new-found condition, Furo is amazed to find the dead ends of his life wondrously open out before him. As a white man in Nigeria, the world is seemingly his oyster - except for one thing: despite his radical transformation, his ass remains robustly black... Funny, fierce, inventive and daringly provocative - this is a very modern satire, with a sting in the tail. MY VERDICT I initially came across this book late last year and the title caught my eye immediately . I in cl ud ed it in the first ever Wishlist on the blog here . So when i was gifted this book by my friend back in July, I was super eager to read it . Now for my review ; T

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