I found this book immensely frustrating—I wanted to love it much more than I did, but despite the beauty of Okri's prose, I read The Famished Road itching for a red pen. At least half of the book could have been edited out, and it would have made for a much stronger novel. I can appreciate what Okri was trying to do with making it so cyclical: the novel is about Azaro, a 'spirit child' who is reborn over and over to the same parents, enduring the same events, paralleling the struggles Africa faces having finally won back its independence. It just didn't work. It all felt muddled and vague, as if Okri hadn't thought through exactly what he wanted to say. I will look out for some of Okri's later writing, to see if he's improved on the glimmers of promise he shows here, but overall this needed half the length and twice the precision. ( )

The Famished Road by Ben Okri is all about spirits. Azaro is a child in Africa struggling between two worlds: that of the spiritual and that of the Earthly. His parents on Earth are well meaning, but poverty driven, people. the basic theme of Famished Road is the definitive difference and ultimate struggle between good and evil. Azaro's personal struggle is with spirits that can only exist if Azaro is dead. Azaro's father struggles with abuse and power. Starting as a boxer he soon delves into the world of politics to gain power. Madam Kato is a simple bartender who begins her part of the story by wanting more profit but as a result of greed, sinks lower and lower. Along with the ever-entwining magical realism is the drifting of morality. ( )

Okri's book follows Azaro, a spirit child, who chooses life on earth over his spirit existence. Born to a poor family, his fellow spirits try to drag him back towards his other world, as he struggles to find a life in this one. His father is a drunken idealist, his mother a downtrodden pragmatist. The family witness changes to their ramshackle community, changes which incorporate battles between tradition and modernisation, political and social unrest, and the apparent moral decline of their neighbourhood. Azaro's family are witness to the battles between conflicting forces for the soul of their community, and the evolution of their lives.

So, why the negative reaction? Firstly, because the book uses a very heavy handed form of magical realism. I like magical realism with a deft touch, such as in books by Gunter Grass, Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In all these examples, the magical realism is a device employed alongside the narrative to create a dreamlike reality. Okri, however, uses magical realism as a replacement for narrative. The book is a long allegory, and there is no real story to it, just a series of mostly unconnected allegorical events. I can think of several books which take this approach, none of which I have enjoyed. Characters flit in and out of focus, doing weird stuff with abandon. Their roles as ciphers for wider events completely overtakes the need to flesh them out as real people, making everyone in the book 2-dimensional and, for me, therefore completely uninteresting as individuals. Secondly, and in complete contrast to all the blurbs, I found Okri's language pedestrian and mundane. His use of staccato sentences frequently made the text read like a novel for children, often barely rising above 'He did this. He then did that. Then this happened.'. It was among some of the most boring prose I have ever read in an adult book. Thirdly, the narrative, such as it is, is repetitive, and involved Azaro running into and out of the jungle, getting slapped on the head, before there is a big fight and his father gets beaten up. This seemed to happen pretty much every 20 pages or so. I don't believe this was a deliberate device by Okri to make a point, simply a result of failing to keep any eye on an overarching narrative amongst all the weird stuff happening. To cap it all, I'm not sure I could find any sympathy for Okri's themes. The blurbs described them as universal, but I though they were rendered as such by a persisting vagueness in what he was actually trying to say. It may be my prejudice as a reader, but I think it is a pitfall of magical realism that it can be used to create a smokescreen behind which it is possible to hide fuzzy thought and vague ideas. Perhaps it was a result of not appreciating Okri's language, but that is exactly what I thought he was trying to do here.

kinda lost the tempo and set it aside

Didn't finish this, perhaps should go back to it.