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Loading... The Selfless Act of Breathingby JJ Bola
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This could be quite a difficult read, centered as it is around depression and the intention to end a life. Michael is a teacher in London, from the Congo and having arrived as a refugee when a child. we see his interactions with some of the children in the book and he seems to be an effective teacher, providing a positive role model for the disaffected youth. His father returned to the Congo and is believed to have died there as a result. Michael is suffering a prolonged depression and decides to quit his job, go to America and, when the money runs out, end his life. His story is told in 2 parallel strands, in the first person in his time in London and in the third person in his travels around America. How he intends to actually die is never made terribly clear, it is as if he wishes to cease being rather than to die, if that makes sense. I really felt for Michael. Having suffered depression myself, the tiredness, the effort required to actually make it through the day, the inability to open up about it all felt very real and painful. My route out of it was counseling and I can't recoemmend it enough to those in a similar position. We don't always know what is happening in Michael's head, I'm not sure he's always honest with himself, and so there remains an element of ambiguity about the fate of his father and his father's role in his life. His relationship with his mother seems frozen at that mid teen age, when his father left, and they have both fallen into a role that satisfies neither well. When his mother wants to change and marry someone Michael can't deal with this, possibly because they have never properly processed the leaving and death in the first place. There's a hell of a lot packed into this, a lot of it raw and painful but it is not without some optimism. People can make a difference to each other, it can be a case of the right person at the right time. no reviews | add a review
Michael Kabongo is a British-Congolese teacher living in London on the cusp of two identities. On paper, he seems to have it all: he’s beloved by his students, popular with his co-workers and the pride and joy of a mother who emigrated from the Congo to the UK in search of a better life. But behind closed doors, he’s been struggling with the overwhelming sense that he can’t address the injustices he sees raging before him – from his relentless efforts to change the lives of his students for the better to his attempts to transcend the violence and brutality that marginalises young Black men around the world. Then one day he suffers a devastating loss, and his life is thrown into a tailspin. As he struggles to find a way forward, memories of his fathers’ violent death, the weight of refugeehood and an increasing sense of dread threaten everything he’s worked so hard to achieve. Longing to escape the shadows in his mind and start anew, Michael decides to spontaneously pack up and go to America, the mythical 'land of the free', where he imagines everything will be better, easier – a place where he can become someone new, someone without a past filled with pain. On this transformative journey, Michael travels everywhere from New York City to San Francisco, partying with new friends, sparking fleeting romances and splurging on big adventures, with the intention of living the life of his dreams until the money in his bank account runs out. Written in spellbinding prose, with Bola’s trademark magnetic storytelling, The Selfless Act of Breathing takes us on a wild ride to odd but exciting places as Michael makes surprising new connections and faces old prejudices in new settings. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2023/12/the-selfless-act-of-breathing.html
Reviewed for NetGalley. ( )