Ancestor Stones (2006)

I borrowed this from a friend after seeing her latest book shortlisted for two awards. I think the story line had huge potential. However, I found it a struggle to recognise the different narrators each time they appeared, so their individual life experiences all ran together.
It is the story of four sisters, born to different wives of Gibril Kholifa, in Sierra Leone. There is little to suggest their connection to each other as it is not until the later years that they feature in each others stories.
The tale does gradually build up a picture of the role women play in Sierra Leone i.e. chattels to the men. However their independent spirits slowly emerge as the twentieth century progresses. A distinction is also made between the cultural lifestyles of the western world and these third world countries. ( )

The book tells the life stories of women in the Kholifa family, across multiple generations and 70+ years. While the book includes a family tree diagram in the opening, the book can be read without it, or in any order, such is its lyrical, poetic and connected nature. Unlike 100 Years of Solitude by Marquez, Ancestor Stones almost never explains the relations between the characters, including the matriarchs, daughters, aunts who, as the story progresses proceed through each of those roles. The book is set in Sierra Leone, and the reader is exposed to the admixture of tribal, Muslim, and missionary Christian cultures. At times poignant and sad, the book drives forward with matter-of-fact life-changing events such as war, regime change, independence, fire, betrayal, marriage, but without these events overshadowing or corrupting the sophisticated and subtle maturation of the women. ( )

This a beautiful, thoughtful piece of work to be read and savored. The protagonist, Albie, has moved from Sierra Leone with her family to settle in the UK. She receives a letter from Sierra Leone informing her that her grandfather's coffee plantation is now hers and is waiting for her. Compelled by her curiosity, she travels back to Africa to find out more.

Her journey takes her into the lives of her family. She sits at the feet of four of her paternal aunts, hearing their stories as they relive their lives through the decades. Polygamy is the order of the day in this society, so the aunts share a father, but each has a different mother. This is an oral storytelling society, so the women are skilled in spinning tales that captivate and paint a distinctive picture of life in Africa. References to the sun and the wind, the grass and the trees, the moon and the shadows abound, and hold intrinsic value for these people. When they declare that, "the air was heavy and wrapped itself around" them, and "the shadows were short and black black black", or refer to the "steely-grey light of the morning", we see how close they are to nature and how its aura has a bearing on their daily lives.

Forna's luxurious writing makes the reader feel present in Africa: You can hear the trader calling his wares in the marketplace; sense the twittering birds hiding in trees from the warm afternoon sun; and watch the clear river water running as the women bathe and revel in its coolness. I love the wisdom and the spirit of these women who forge lives for themselves, without complaint. They take control and shape their own destinies; and, in the telling, they seem to share their disappointments and triumphs with equal vigor. Their stories span almost ninety years—from the 1920s to the present in Sierra Leone—and provide an outline of the country's social and political history as the four characters face the challenges of being women in a male-dominated society and coping with colonisation, subsequent independence, voting for the first time, new and corrupt political leaders, and civil war.

Each woman's narrative is unique, with a few subtle overlaps between stories. I would have enjoyed seeing the individuals, as sisters, interact even more in their stories. Forna is an outstanding writer and this is an accomplished novel. Read it!

This review was initially published in the launch issue of Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2009/issue1/reviews_16.html ( )

I discovered Aminatta Forna when I read her memoir of her childhood in Sierra Leone as the daughter of a Temne doctor and a Scottish mother as well as the search for what happened to her father, who went into politics but refused to be corrupted and who subsequently disappeared. After the civil war which nearly destroyed the country, Forna went back to Sierra Leone to visit her family and research her father’s fate. It was getting to know the women in her father’s family that inspired her to write this book, which, though not set specifically in Sierra Leone, clearly chronicles the experiences of four aunts (sisters with different mothers) of Abie, an African woman who lives in London married to a white man but returning to her native country to revitalize the family farming business. The body of the book consists of 16 sections, four each in the voices of the four sisters as they tell their stories to Abie. The earliest story is dated 1926 and the latest 1999. The earlier stories chronicle life in a tribal village that’s relatively untouched by the contemporary world; the later ones chronicle terrifying experiences during the civil war.The novel does have some problems, primarily with the structure that holds it together. It’s difficult keeping the sisters straight. There’s a family tree printed at the beginning of the book and I found myself referring to it often to see how the various characters were related. I also found myself flipping back again and again to remind myself of the past of the sister I was reading. It was also sometimes difficult to recognize that each of the sisters is talking to Abie. I’d run into a “you” and wonder who she was talking to until I remembered the frame of the novel. That said, by the second set of stories, I found myself hooked on the characters, anxious to know what would happen to them, looking forward to seeing how they would survive the war years. Nothing I have ever read has brought me closer to understanding the lives of African women. When Serah chronicles her loneliness and isolation at a teacher's training college in London, I feel her frustration, not only with the cold and dark but with the lack of color and of human interaction: no one looks at her as she walks through a bigger city than she's ever known, with more people than she has ever seen before at one time, all avoiding eye contact.The experience of these women is rich and full, and the process of reading their stories is the process of living an African life and coming to problems of the modern world from a cultural experience totally unlike that of women raised in the US. It gave me more insights into African life than two years living in Sierra Leone as a Peace Corps volunteer. Incidentally it clarified for me why African-Americans were even more “at sea” than I was in that culture. I at least did not expect to “belong”. The main character, Abie, and her counterpart, the author, Aminatta Forna, had to pay cultural dues in order to belong. We see it in how the sisters view Abie, in how their attitudes toward her change, and in how she herself in the end gives up indoor showers in favor of bathing in the river. A bit of an awkward symbol but significant nonetheless. ( )

Ancestor Stones tells stories of life in Sierra Leone during most of the 20th century.

Abie returns to her homeland and village after years spent in Europe, meets her four aunties and listens to their stories that range from the 1920s to the 1990s; from the times the pale moon shadow men scared little children who'd never seen such a thing before to the 'stability' of the British governance to the years of independence, corruption and a bloody civil war.

Each of the four narrators are given four chapters in the book, and their ages differ so--they all have same father but different mothers--that the 4x4 structure covers the mentioned 80 years period and a wide range of women's lives in different ages.

The structure works well on displaying the history of Sierra Leone and (woman's) life there. Maybe even a little too well, might one think: at times the characters feel like samples more than real people. I had problems distinguishing the aunties from each other. Spending 15 to 30 pages with on and then 80 or so with three others did not help here. When starting a new chapter I often needed to browse back to check what had happened to this auntie before.

Other than that the book is great, especially in little details. There are several lines and passages that are either funny, thought provoking, or both. ( )