Housegirl: A Novel

Belinda knows her place in the world, when her father cannot pay for her anymore, her mother sends her away to work in the household of people she calls Aunt and Uncle in accordance with Ghanaian customs. She is not the only maid there, also 11-year-old Mary works for them and quickly becomes something like a sister Belinda never had. When Belinda is sent to England to take care of Amma, a girl her own age, the two have to part which isn’t easy for either of them. Yet, they manage to stay in contact over the thousands of kilometres that now separate them. Mary wants to know everything about Belinda’s posh life in London, but the older sister cannot tell everything that she experiences in England. Her role is different now which is show more hard to get used to and people behave in a different way. She misses her home town, but also sees the chance that she is given since she can go back to school and study. When a tragic incident calls her back to Africa, Belinda realises that only a couple of months were enough to change her completely.

Michael Donkor was born in England to a Ghanaian household and trained as an English teacher and completed a Master’s in Creative Writing. He was selected as a “New Face in Fiction” by The Observer in January 2018. “Hold” is his debut novel in which also autobiographical elements can be found even though his protagonist is female and he has lived all his life in the UK.

What I liked about the novel were the different perspectives on life that you get and the difficulties that living between different cultures can mean for you personally but also for the people around you. First of all, I hardly know anything about Ghana so the beginning of the novel when we meet Mary and Belinda, young girls who work full time as maids, gives a short glance at what life in other parts of the world might be. They were not treated especially bad, quite the contrary, but the fact that the lack of money in their family leads to giving up education is something which is far away from our world in Europe.

Most interesting also Belinda’s arrival in London and her awareness of being different. She has brown skin, but this is different from the Asian brown of the Indians or the skin of the girls from Jamaica. It is those slight differences that are of course seen by the members of those groups at the margin but often neglected by the majority society. Even though she shares the same cultural background with Amma, the two girls could hardly be more distinct. The most obvious is their sexual orientation where Belinda sticks to a romantic understanding of love and where Amma has her coming-out as homosexual. Belinda can easily adapt to a lot of things, but this clearly transgresses a line that she will not cross. The girls’ friendship is nothing that comes easy for both of them, but it splendid how Donkor developed it throughout the novel.

Without a doubt, Michael Donkor is a great new voice among the British writers who themselves have made the experience of belonging - but not completely, of being trapped between cultures and having to find their identity while growing up. show less

I liked the idea of this book but in reality, I found it a really slow read.

Initially Belinda is in Ghana working as a house girl with Mary, a younger girl, who is in training. You learn a bit about their friendship and their daily routines. But then, Belinda is sent to London where a family is hoping that she will be a good influence on their daughter Amma. The rest of the story follows what happens as Belinda gets used to living and studying in London. There are obviously vast cultural differences but I felt these were alluded to rather than explored in detail. The friendship with Mary continues, but becomes a more distant one with phone calls being less frequent.

Most of the book is about the lives of the two teenagers in London. The show more blurb says that Belinda finds London 'bewildering', actually I thought she settled in easily and coped with the transition really well. It's an OK read, but I don't think the story will stay with me or be a long term favourite. show less

We felt there were several incongruities in the story which didn't seem to make sense. We also thought that the lesbian sexual encounters offered gratuitous graphic descriptions that didn't lend to enhancing the story, but were perhaps added to grab younger readers. A couple of us read the other Housegirl book and liked it better story-wise, but didn't care for the ending-too neat. This wasn't one of our stronger titles but paired nicely with Homegoing which we read a couple of years ago to further explore the Ghana culture.

Wonderful book. A bit slow but wonderful people and events. Written by a man but strong female voice

I DNF'd this book at 20%