ish-i-ness reviewed Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde
Review of 'Vagabonds!' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Magical realism with lots of political commentary and questions about identity. What’s not to like? I struggled a lot with this, but I’m chalking that up to it being marketed as a novel when it’s really a bunch of short stories that have an overarching narrative. Once I figured that out i started enjoying it. And wow. There’s so much in here. It’s all about the myths people tell themselves to survive the world, unknowingly shaping it, and often hurting others. It’s about how all the people who are forced to live in the shadows because of ideas of propriety and hierarchy manage to continue to exist anyway, and exert their own power to shape the world just enough to make a place for themselves in it, and sometimes a lot more than that. Recommending for fans of China Mieville, but I think this is actually better than his work.
Magical realism with lots of political commentary and questions about identity. What’s not to like? I struggled a lot with this, but I’m chalking that up to it being marketed as a novel when it’s really a bunch of short stories that have an overarching narrative. Once I figured that out i started enjoying it. And wow. There’s so much in here. It’s all about the myths people tell themselves to survive the world, unknowingly shaping it, and often hurting others. It’s about how all the people who are forced to live in the shadows because of ideas of propriety and hierarchy manage to continue to exist anyway, and exert their own power to shape the world just enough to make a place for themselves in it, and sometimes a lot more than that. Recommending for fans of China Mieville, but I think this is actually better than his work.
