Could a book have a more beautiful title? And the novel itself is just as gorgeous; it made me laugh, surprised me and (embarrassingly) had me crying on the tube on more than one occasion. It's one of those books that I read on my Kindle but now need to buy in paperback because I know I'll want to re-visit (and lend) it time and time again.
Blessing has spent her childhood in Lagos, living a relatively privileged life with her beloved parents and older brother Ezikiel. When things go wrong between her parents, though, Blessing finds herself transported to the Nigerian Delta to live with her grandparents. Life here is very different: her grandfather requires them to convert to Islam and, though the family lives in a large compound with their own driver, Blessing must get used to living without such luxuries as electricity and running water. This is also a region where tensions between the locals and the Western Oil Company run high.
The joy of this book is in experiencing life's ups and downs with Blessing, so I won't spoil that for future readers. But it's a story full of surprises, some wonderful and some tragic. In some cases, the rug is pulled out from under everybody's feet, but in other cases Blessing's twelve-year-old naivety means she doesn't see something coming that perhaps the reader does. For this reason, amongst others, I'm really glad that Christie Watson found Blessing's voice; I read on her website that initially the novel was told from the perspective of a white oil worker.
Blessing herself is a darling of a character. She combines childish innocence with clever observations and a very mature approach to what are often complicated relationships. She's funny and kind and often wonderfully indignant. And her voice is enchanting: I realise that sounds like an exaggeration, but phrases like `worries ran across my head with tiny feet' and `it made me feel sadness all the way down to my feet' made me want to smile and cry simultaneously. Story aside, Blessing's voice makes this book an absolute joy to read. I particularly enjoyed seeing Blessing's relationship with her grandmother develop into the central and defining one in her life - something that she comes to rely on as Ezikiel changes from her best friend into a stranger and her mother drifts further and further away - and echoes of the older lady in Blessing's narrative become increasingly frequent.
Blessing's transformation from little girl to young woman is believable and moving, but it's not just Blessing who makes Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away wonderful. Christie Watson has a real talent for writing three-dimensional, realistic characters who leap off the page and who change and develop throughout the novel. Grandma (reliable but mysterious) and Ezikiel (clever, determined and angry) play pivotal roles and are suitably intriguing. Alhaji - Blessing's grandfather - is at once intimidating and amusing. And Clementine - though hilarious - is far more than a token comic character. Many novels are full of forgettable characters, some (like 600 Hours of Edward and The 10PM Question) have a standout protagonist, but it doesn't often happen that a novel has a full cast of characters who stick in the memory for all the right reasons.
This is not just a family saga about a little girl adjusting to life in a new place. It touches on some fairly heavyweight issues, including female circumcision, mixed-faith families and cross-cultural marriages, and the implications (social, environmental and political) of the oil industry for the communities that live in Nigeria. The author says she `wanted to write a political novel but primarily a story' and this is what she's achieved: there is no preaching, and everything is narrated from Blessing's unpolitical perspective, but it's impossible to read Blessing's story without acknowledging the factors shaping her life.
It's easy to see why this book won the Costa First Novel Award (in 2011) and I look forward to what comes next from Christie Watson. I've been sucked into lots of trilogies and series in recent years, and there's always the risk that the story becomes strung out and contrived. So it's really refreshing to read something that has a definite end, that is stand-alone. She promises that her next book will share themes and broad locations with this one, but that the story and characters will be very different, and I think that's exactly the right move.
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- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 December 2013
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- kmkReviewed in the United States on 15 May 2018
Beautiful story of family & survival in Nigeria!
