Book Review Outside Reading: January 10

Book Review Outside Reading

“Between Peace and Pain” by Maaza Mengiste

A Review of The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

The New York Times January 7, 2011

In “Between Peace and Pain,” Maaza Mengiste commends Aminatta Forna for her recent novel, The Memory of Love.  In this review, Mengiste praises Forna, but also discusses the one shortcoming she found in this new publication.  However, because Mengiste is so complimentary of The Memory of Love, the reader is left admiring Forna as a writer and looking for a copy of the piece to read themselves.

In reviewing The Memory of Love, Mengiste employs mostly Post-Colonial criticism.  She begins by explaining the time periods that the novel encompasses, which include Sierra Leone’s colonial struggle with the United Kingdom, their eventual independence, the intermittent years in which the new country struggles to establish themselves as such, and the Civil War that erupts as a result.  However, Mengiste also discusses the effects of the previous colonizer on the new country.  “Hers is a luminous tale of passion and betrayal, encompassing the political unrest that racked Sierra Leone in the late 1960s and the ruinous civil war of the 1990s, as well as the days of tenuous quiet when those who managed to stay alive struggled to cope with the physical and mental scars of those years” (1).  The role of post-colonial criticism in this review reminds me of what can be used to analyze Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Mengiste adopts a very clear voice in this review, and in so doing constructs a well organized piece.  She leads her reader through a well thought-out chain of claims that, along with the warrants she chooses to support them, support her in her praise of Forna.  Mengiste also employs an academic voice that she crafts by displacing syntax and forming compound sentences that add complexity to “Between Peace and Pain.”  The title alone suggests density and the alliteration of the title once again adds to the intricate nature of the review.  The organization and academic voice that Mengiste creates are her two main strengths; through them she is able to effectively communicate how successful of an author she believes Forna to be.

Despite her overwhelming praise of Forna, however, Mengiste also points out what she sees as Forna’s only flaw.  Mengiste describes The Memory of Love as a complex novel full of “interconnecting story lines” (2) that are a result of Forna’s “risks with plot and character” (2).  This point of Mengiste’s is concluded with a discussion of one particular plot point.  “When [a main character] falls in love with a young woman, Mamakay, the writing is powerful, but credulity is strained by a dubious plot twist concerning the woman’s identity and parentage” (2).  Therefore, Mengiste does not just praise Forna.  However, because her one flaw with the author encompasses less than a paragraph of a nine-paragraph-work, a little of the validity of Mengiste’s argument is compromised.  It seemed, to me, that Mengiste was almost too complimentary of Forna; this, however, is Mengiste’s only weakness.