Under the Udala trees - Chinelo Okparanta

Title - Under the Udala Trees

Year - 2015 - August 17th. - Fiction

Author - Chinelo Okparanta

Publisher - Houghton PRESS

Reviewed

Sampson I.M Onwuka

 

A literary child of Soyinka, adopted by interest to Achebe and her work draws blood from both houses. There is color in writing; the style is 21^st English – the language American than New York. There is narrative in its each page interspersed with quick and final arrival of a story of two friends at the eve of the Nigerian Civil War unaware of their biological changes and the changes taking place around them. The pages did not impress, her writing does – more like a book heavily edited to suit the tempo public interest. She hardly makes it to a genre, and one gets muddled with civil war scenario and loose the construction of her story - whereas the nature of writing is academic demonstration and it based on a further hope of the gift which must be used without fear I for one, is compelled to tickle her style. 

Taken differently, most interesting readers may be looking at the story from any given perspective, but in terms of style and authenticity of delivery - there is Soyinka to compare with. If like Soyinka, one incident from the civil war defined the book or formed the basis on her narrative, it will earn additional strip than 2 stars. There is nothing teach her than the re-affirmation that you can attack the subject as you see it.  Chinelo Okparanta has some distance to cover but not necessarily ways to go, she has some depth to descend in with story and her subject than the events that deals with her story, but a nook and tie of such nature riddled with sarcasm hardly survive the language of demonstration.

If there is such a thing as climax in writing, my impression is that hers is not such a plateau as she is a peak – the success of the book will depend on how far she walks the peak  - for instance the range between the arrival of new Pentecostal attitude in the 80’s in Nigerian and the backdrop to Ironsi’s administration.  The problem with the binary fusion in the discussion in the page is that it often fails to comport to a story line. We can argue that in writing, there are degrees of finality of personal expression which shows in any book. From such loftily the most dispassionate observer can begin to form images of her mind’s construction.

“I sucked; out of the way things had taken this unexpected turn. Out of the fact I had gone and allowed myself to marry Chibundu. Out of the fact that his job had led us away from Aba, away from Ndidi.”

“He sucked; out of the rigidness of his job. Out of the newness of his responsibilities.”

“And of Course there was again, the state of our new home. So many things old and falling apart as they were, it was a home that fueled our bad moods. If it could have done as much, the home itself would have sulked with us.”  

You are no longer looking a form of Buchi Emecheta in the first two lines, a bit of Maya Angelou in the second line and that when she mentions‘And of Course there was again…’, there is a raconteur ameliorated to Sula and Toni Morrison than Alice Walker and her ‘Color Purple’. She is not yet in this arena, she is saved by her expectations of the reader – the Nigeria; the African.
  

The unpreparedness of the Nigerian Civilian population is a language of demonstration that is blighted by the mirage of Pentecostal revival, there are hints of Brother Jerome and a repressed Soyinka and a ‘Hammered Gold’ but we lose tract of the author after a while. For a book with less 300 pages, the author is not a major. The perspective of living out a period and era is not easy detail, but based on Adiche, Chinelo Okparanta and her book merits an introduction.

Fatality does not always suggest hints of desperation which Adiche strong nerves, it seethes to a finish and the executive power of this author frail with impression of a young writer decided by nature crippled by scope.  But going forward --- her writing is bereft of youth – her images are no longer for this audience.