Voyages in literature

I always tend to have at least a couple of books on the go, and I choose them depending on my mood. So I must have been in the mood for a saga (in the modern sense of the word) since I plunged simultaneously into two doorstoppers: Americanah, by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by the Indian writer Kiran Desai (both were written in English.) As I read on, I realised they shared a lot of similarities.

First of all, may I say both of these women are wonderful writers, whose clarity of prose and turn of phrase I much admire. It was very pleasurable immersing myself in their world.

Both books are meant to be, primarily, love stories. From an interview with Kiran Desai:

I wanted to write a story about love and loneliness in the modern world. I wanted to write a present-day romance with an old-fashioned beauty. In the past of my parents, and certainly my grandparents, an Indian love story would mostly be rooted in one community, one class, one religion, and often also one place. But a love story in today’s globalised world would likely wander in so many different directions.

However, the book is about so much more than that—it is about displacement, about identity, about moving to another country and then feeling you don’t belong in either your new home or your old one. It is about race and class distinctions.

Americanah deals with a lot of the same themes, although set in a primarily different background. Again based on a love story at its core, again exploring themes of displacement, race, identity and adapting to a different culture.

Both books are stories of love and expectations in today’s globalised world.

Which book did I prefer? Probably the first, for the simple reason that Ifemelu, the heroine of Americanah, is not a very likeable character. Although bright and self-assured, she often tends to shoot herself in the foot, especially as regards relationships. She can be unpleasant, disdainful and very sure her opinions are the right ones. I did enjoy the descriptions of life in Nigeria, though, a country I know little about.

This brings me to my main criticism of both books: although I understand how both writers became engrossed in the world they created (and I know that Desai worked on her book for years), I thought both books were ultimately too long and could have done with more judicious editing. I know it’s difficult to kill one’s darlings—but there was just too much detail and repetition of the minutiae of daily life, the backstory or subplots, the characters’ thoughts.

I asked myself—did I think this because our attention span has shrunk? I remember devouring long books like A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth. Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Robertson Davies…I read Middlemarch twice. Would I have the patience now? I wonder. If I want to re-read something long nowadays, I usually get the audiobook.

What do you think? Has anyone read one or both of these books? Did you like them? Are they too long? I would be interested to know. Awaiting comments!