Eduardo Santiago reviewed Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti
Review of 'Walking on Cowrie Shells' on 'Goodreads'
Did not work for me: half the stories I couldn’t figure out the context, and those I did, I couldn’t relate to the characters. That almost entirely has to do with my demographic — old, male, with little room for shallow petty nasty toxicity in my life; not Nkweti’s target audience at all. Almost entirely. Another part of my inability to enjoy it was, I think, Nkweti’s voice. It felt to me like she tried too hard: her sentences too precise, her settings too hip, calculated to give just the bare minimum information so as to leave the reader struggling, tossed overboard but within sight of land, all the reader has to do is work hard enough and we’ll get it. But I just didn’t work hard enough. Or maybe I’m not smart enough.
The stories are varied in content and voice, with a few common elements: youth, loneliness, cultural …
Did not work for me: half the stories I couldn’t figure out the context, and those I did, I couldn’t relate to the characters. That almost entirely has to do with my demographic — old, male, with little room for shallow petty nasty toxicity in my life; not Nkweti’s target audience at all. Almost entirely. Another part of my inability to enjoy it was, I think, Nkweti’s voice. It felt to me like she tried too hard: her sentences too precise, her settings too hip, calculated to give just the bare minimum information so as to leave the reader struggling, tossed overboard but within sight of land, all the reader has to do is work hard enough and we’ll get it. But I just didn’t work hard enough. Or maybe I’m not smart enough.
The stories are varied in content and voice, with a few common elements: youth, loneliness, cultural pressures to babymake, and of course racism/sexism. But it just felt flat; like the first one, narrated first-person by an utterly banal person, but her language comes off instead like someone Woke writing a caricature of a shallow unselfaware ideal. It was forced.
Favorite story: The Living Infinite, near the end. That was complex and sweet and thoughtful.
About three stars, but unrated because I don’t want to pull down the rating for a new and talented writer who I sincerely wish to read again.
