It is not often that a novel
comes to hand that has been prized, praised and pre-inflated. Half of a
Yellow Sun was in that category when I opened it and began to read. And
I was captivated immediately. I read the first hundred pages at a pace,
delighting in the ease with which the Chimanada Ngozi Adichie used language
to draw me into the middle-class clique centred on the University of Nsukka
which provides the core characters of her book. Their infidelities, their
inconsistencies, their desire, despite the servants, for equality and
freedom are symptomatic of their time. The dissimilar twin sisters, Olanna
and Kainene, one imagines will provide a vehicle for parallel and different
lives, providing contrast and metaphor, and I eagerly awaited their stories
to unfold.
The book’s sections alternate between the early and late 1960s, the latter
period in Nigeria, of course, being the Biafran War. And, yes, the
characters live through the war, and their lives and their natures, and
along with them their country, are transformed by it. Perhaps even their own
identity is redrawn, especially once the promise of a recognised nationality
is promised and then denied. Eventually there are vivid scenes of the war’s
brutality, its double standards, its compromises, its cynicism, its racism
and its starvation. The images are graphic and vivid, unforgettable even,
and the ability of war to undermine utterly and profoundly any assumption
that an individual might harbour about an imagined future is movingly
portrayed.
So why then was I so disappointed with the book? All I can offer, I’m
afraid, is that eventually I found it shallow. Its apparent concentration on
the domestic lives of the characters undermined their credibility as members
of an intellectual elite and rendered them two (or perhaps even one)
dimensional. Chimanada Ngozi Adichie carefully tells us that Odenigbo is a
mathematician and in love with his subject. He covets his personal library,
which he loses in the war and then has replaced by a benefactor. But in my
experience, mathematicians are passionate people – and are usually
passionate about mathematics. No mathematician I have ever met avoids all
mention of personal academic interests in social settings as scrupulously as
Odenigbo. I didn’t want the novel to become a textbook, but if characters
were ballet dancers, surely we would expect to hear of the roles they had
danced and the music that had moved them. Of Odenigbo’s academic character
we hear nothing. Why is he therefore endowed with knowledge and interest
that is never explored? Perhaps he only exists as a character to interact
with the twin sisters.
And the problem is repeated with Richard Churchill who, we are told is an
Igbo-speaking English radical. I knew a lot of sixties radicals and they
were never slow to offer an opinion or, indeed, place themselves squarely in
a space on the ideological chessboard. In Half of a Yellow Sun, we
never learn if Richard is a Marxist, Maoist, Leninist or Trot. He never
mentions Castro or Ho Chi Minh. He doesn’t appear to have any position on
capitalism, society, business, the Third World, South Africa, Central
America or even Viet Nam. I found myself wondering which sixties decade saw
his radicalisation. When Chimanada Ngozi Adichie tells us that he travels to
Lagos to attend a function in honour of the state funeral of Winston
Churchill (perhaps no relation), I began to wonder if he was an early- (or
indeed late) born radical Tory. I have been an expatriate myself, so I can
forgive him his attendance of the function, but not his total silence on the
issues of the day.
This becomes especially problematic when both Britain and the Soviet Union
are mentioned as assisting the Federal Forces in the destruction of
secessionist Biafra. What sixties radical, given the inevitability of his
assumption of a Cold War bifurcated paradigm to underpin his ideological
position, would not have pondered and discussed this at length, even
in bed?
Eventually we also have to read along with continued adulation of Ojukwu.
His Excellency might even be the Great Helmsman, himself, given that his
free-thinking minions seem unable to mention a criticism of an historical
character who eventually fled to Ivory Coast to save his skin and live his
life in relative comfort after leaving millions of his own people dead.
Perhaps he had to be preserved to fight another day, as he eventually did,
if in a different way, but surely no sixties radical would have left his
role unquestioned. It doesn’t ring true, and an opportunity to develop a
character like Richard through his own and inevitable disillusion was
ignored.
And then we are presented with a pair of American journalists that the
radical Richard has to greet and service in his role as a promoter of the
Biafran cause. They are both called Charles and apparently have the same
nickname, Chuck – which surely should have been Charlie of the “right”
variety to enhance the farce. They are simply not credible. We can probably
accept as deadly accurate that the majority of Americans neither knew where
Biafra was nor cared a jot about its plight, since the attentions of the
politicised were focused elsewhere at the time. But the presentation of a
pair of foreign correspondents as crass as these is surely incredible, as
is, equally, Richard’s apparent patience in dealing with them.
I did also become mildly annoyed at what became quite extensive use of Igbo
words when they seemed to offer no extra flavour, meaning or understanding.
I have no problem with the use of local terms to enhance a feeling of place
and sound, but their over use tends to obfuscate. We really wanted to know
what these people thought, but we were never told.
So what are we left with? Half of a Yellow Sun is a beautifully
written, beautifully composed domestic tale of fidelity, infidelity, loyalty
and opportunism. The contrast between the characters’ and therefore the
nation’s lives at the start and the end of the decade is engaging. But
because their psyches are never really explored, we never understand any
motives or, therefore, any consequences. Reading Half of a Yellow Sun
was a thoroughly enjoyable experience which, with hindsight, I would have
foregone.
