Surprisingly disappointing. Farah is a good writer with a very good feel for interpersonal relationships and the way people communicate with each other. The plot of this novel is simply told: Aar, a Somali working for the UN, is killed very early in the book—just after the reader has come to like and be intrigued by him. The rest of the book relates the story of his sister, Bella—a highly successful, professional fashion photographer who travels the world and is highly successful—who places her life on hold to return to Kenya, where Aar's children have been living, to devote herself to raising them. (It doesn't help that the children, who are both teenagers, are largely "stick figures," whether because Farah doesn't really feel comfortable portraying teenagers or because he simply isn't good at it.) Perhaps the central conflict in the book concerns her relationship with her brother’s ex-wife. But nothing in the book, not any of the people, not any of the relationships, struck me as particularly insightful. Indeed, I found most of it far too predictable. Everything was believable but there was nothing in any of it that struck me as having a particular theme or message worth constructing a book around. Even the constant depiction of grief seems unexceptional and even repetitive. I read Links a month or two ago, the first book of his I had read. I thought it a far better work and, in fact, the reason I returned to read him again so soon. Guess I picked the wrong work.

By way of further explanation, let me add a few comments about his Farah's writing. For reasons I cannot begin to understand, Farah had a habit in this book (a habit that he did not have at all in Links) of showing off the breadth of his reading and knowledge. If he had limited these "intrusions" to a few times, they might have been entirely convincing (although given his characters' backstories, I honestly doubt that any of them would have been entirely convincing). But they kept popping up in the mouths of characters in whom they simply seemed to be odd and out of place:

"A line from a poem by Dylan Thomas..." and he proceeds to quote something from Thomas.
"A phrase from Samuel Beckett...." and ditto.
"[quotation from Roland Barthes...who he expressly notes reading in his acknowledgments]"
"...remembering a line from a poem by Apollinaire..." which he then quotes.
"remembering a couple of lines from a Rilke poem...." and ditto.
"as the John Coltrane lyric goes" and ditto.

Enough already.

He likewise relies overmuch on frequently identifying and quoting from Somali sayings and proverbs. And his contemporary cultural references from around the world is both astonishing and intrusive: Celine Dion; Camus; "The Dirty Dozen" [US movie]; "Ben Hur" [US movie]; Alfred Stieglitz; Georgia O'Keeffe; Nina Simone; Cesaria Evora; Mapplethorpe; Salgado; Paul Robeson; the New York Yankees [US baseball team]; Champions League teams; Kenneth Kaunda; Mussolini; Miles Davis; Miriam Makeba.... It's not that these references are "wrong" in context, it's that they are so frequent that they feel dropped in for the purpose of displaying the breadth of his cultural knowledge. Likewise, he alternates between frequent use of UK and US slang. So you're reading along and all of a sudden there's a slang US idiom that is used correctly but is out of place when cited constantly in a novel about Somalis that takes place in Kenya. For those who are interested, he also goes to the trouble of compiling a very specific, almost laughable, list of "gay classics" that feels as if it were copied from an encyclopedia. All of this tells me that, for whatever reason, he felt obliged to pack his writing with this stuff because he felt that the writing (or the novel as a whole) needed it. And, for a novelist as accomplished and highly regarded as he is, I find that little short of astonishing. And I close with this sentence which just sort of left me slack-jawed with amazement: "A life of quality merde mixed with quite a bit of weltschmerz." ( )

The Prologue grabs the reader's interest but the rest of the book drags. I picked this book up hoping to learn more about another culture, but it is really just a domestic drama that could be set anywhere. The language is stilted, there are too many irrelevant details, and the author incessantly mentions his main character's physical beauty as if she's his dream girlfriend or something. I gave up after pushing myself through 3/4 of this novel. Kirkus Review doesn't usually steer me wrong, but this is apparently an exception. ( )

Lyrically beautiful story of Bella, a famous photographer, returning to Nairobi to care for her niece and nephew after the death of her beloved older brother. The descriptive quality was excellent - geography, city life, and food came alive, for example. I loved the photography, and how Bella elected to use it to develop a stronger bond with her charges. The teenaged children were well drawn with distinct and nicely nuanced characters. However, there is a strange distance between the reader and the adults in the story, whose emotions seemed strangely sterile. While the story had the potential for much drama, it was really very narrative and calm. At times it seemed to be driving towards some decision, but it ended with no climax and only assumed resolution. Much to like, but there was a potential for more. ( )

When War is killed by a suicide bomber, or maybe a directed hit, his sister Bella, a renowned photographer returns to Kenya to care for her beloved brother's children. Valerie the children's mother had left War for another woman years before.

My reactions to this novel are very mixed. I enjoyed all the discussions on photography, as many of the characters are displaced Somaliland I liked reading about how they are judged in the country they fled to after the Civil War in Somalia. They also discuss the different food influences in their cuisines. When the children's mother reappears with her female partner, this provides the tension in the story as she originally attempts to get close to her children with the hope that they will choose to live with her and her partner.

What I had trouble with was the language, which delta stilted at times and the distance I felt from the characters. Also felt the ending was very abrupt and anti-climatic. So while I found the main story interesting enough to keep reading, I just expected more. So I would recommend this to readers who want to read about the Somalia refugee experience in Kenya and a family story that was somewhat different.

ARC from publisher. ( )