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Half of a Yellow Sun

Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

109 reviews
Sales Rank: 187

Media: Paperback
Pages: 448
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.8 x 1.3

ISBN: 0007200285
EAN: 9780007200283
ASIN: 0007200285

Publication Date: January 15, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Same day UK despatch.

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Customer Reviews: Read 104 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

instructive but too one-sided July 13, 2008
I found the book interesting in so far as I didn't know anything about the situation in Nigeria at the time the story is set in- I was two when the events unfolded- but I do remember growing up at a time when adults often told you to eat up and be grateful because you were not a Biafran child. Not that I needed any such encouragement.So being a total ignoramus about Africa I did manage to get an idea of what it must have been like. I read different reviews and sometimes agree and sometimes not. I do agree when readers say that they don't really know that much more after finishing the book.The context is not clear for someone with no previous knowlegde of the war. At the same time it might be unreasonable to expect the writer to furnish all the historical background. Other readers wrote that they hadn't felt connected with the characters and I must admit I failed to warm to them as well.They were interesting enough but didn't leap off the page. Maybe it has to do with the fact that their actions are mostly the focus and not really their thoughts.I sometimes felt I was reading a catalogue of facts rather than a novel. But something else bothered me a lot more and it is the fact that the book is so one-sided. It is a celebration of Biafra, its courageous, heroic inhabitants, its martyrs... I wouldn't have a problem with that if we had had access to how people in the other camp thought, what their opinion about the causes of the war were but we never get this much needed other perspective. Once again, it wouldn't be easy for the writer who has lost family members in that war and has relied on family memories to tell this tale, to incorporate a part seen through the eyes of Nigerians.However the problem is that without it, the book reads a lot like propaganda and I am not sure that someone who was Hausa, Fulani... and not Igbo would necessarily accept it as the truth.
What the book did achieve however, was bring to our attention, a way of life, colourful people, customs, beliefs that a lot of us were probably unaware of, and it has helped us gain some insight into a very complex and moving page of history.

4 out of 5 stars

Educational... July 3, 2008
I picked this book up partly because of the recommendations here on Amazon and partly because of the Orange award.

I liked the changing from the different voices and characterisation, and also the switch back to the past and I thought the book was educational (I hadn't heard of the Nigeria - Biafra war so for me it was enlightening)and the story was enjoyable.

On a negative I thought the end was a little weak - I didn't think the last 100 pages were that gripping and really wanted to end the book by this stage.

Overall, whilst the novel was interesting I won't be running off to immediately read her other book - Purple Hibiscus. I would read Adichie again but she won't be on top of my reading list.

2 out of 5 stars

Overly Schematic? July 2, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

I'd give this novel 1 1/2 stars if I could. I originally bought this book as a present for my mum based on the West African setting and all the garlands but, when it became obvious that she had no intention of ever picking it up, ended up reading it myself . My hurt feelings have since been washed away by my relief that she'll never know-- at least not for certain-- what a stinker this is. Although, the book has got an academic value, I guess, in that it gives an idea of what kind of modern African fiction would appeal to a Western critic.

I think the top of p. 245 pretty much sums up my problem with the story and the writing (and it never occurred to me that the book starts off boring then becomes dynamic in the last 100 or so pages, like many of my fellow low-scoring reviewers, because, as far as I am concerned, it is fundamentally inert all the way through). On p. 245 one of the protagonists, Olanna, is confronted by her next door neighbour, an African-American woman, Edna. It is one of the few scenes which places the story in any sort of historical context (and I may as well point out that there is just enough context for someone who never had any idea that Biafra-- apparently a Portuguese word, groan!-- ever existed for me to think that the exceptionalism of the whole thing wasn't being laid on a bit thick and then again not enough context for me to truly, *truly*, understand what motivated the movement to secede from Nigeria). Edna bursts into Olanna's room in tears and explains that white people have bombed a black church in her hometown "Four little girls had died. One of them was her niece's schoolmate. 'I saw her when I went back home six months ago.' Edna said. 'Just six months ago I saw her.'" The book is full of clunkers like this which only serve to remind you that all of these characters are shallow constructs. From head to toe. And who speaks like that? "'Just six months ago I saw her.'" Honestly. I'm suprised she there wasn't a scene in the preceding pages where Olanna found Edna rocking back and forth in a darkened room "'Edna', gasped Olanna 'What's wrong?'. Edna looked up from the floor, 'It's been five years since my cousin was lynched for whistling at a white woman in Chicago. He was only fourteen!' she sobbed, 'fourteen he only was!'" Cos, you know, they've made a documentary about Emmett Till too...

Where is Adichie's much trumpeted (in her afterword) 'emotional truth'? I can see how these incidents have basis in reality but the way they are knitted together is far from seamless. The quoted incident in particular simply reminds you that at the time when this was going on South Africa (which supported Biafra?) was an apartheid state and that African-Americans were still fighting for basic civil rights. But get this, you are supposed to feel bad, and not be 'Silent While They Die', about the plight of a bunch of middle-class Nigerians who were living better in the 60s than a great deal of the Earth's population live *right now*. There are people dying right now in Darfur and Adichie thinks what we all need to be reminded about are the vague gripes and resentments of one of Nigeria's more successful tribes.

The veneer of 'literariness' is especially tiresome; the author's apparent belief in the subtle, many-layered achievement of having one of the characters write a 'novel within a novel' to give a greater sense of background to the conflict simply boggles the mind. The sections dealing with this novel, which aren't Wikipedia cut-and-pastes of Biafra's short history, read *exactly* like the rest of the story. Except without the rest of the book's half-hearted, half-baked insights into the character's minds. In this sense, it's more transparently representative of what the novel actually achieves, IMO, than the rest of it.

There is also a little bit of jiggling with the timeline which serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever except to drag out a brittle tale of middle class manners and misdemeanours, I mean, really boring stuff. And I suppose the novel-within-a-novel thing concludes with a twist, albeit one so epically underwhelming that I again wondered what the purpose was apart from, you know, to seem more artsy? But these conceits could not disguise the fundamental lack of any story, or what is more important, the lack of 'emotional truth'. I'm not a heartless robot, I am West African myself and yet I am sad to say that I think two other 'Memoirs of Oppression' ('Wild Swans' and 'Maus') I have read have worked considerably better than this one notwithstanding that I am equally disinterested/unsympathetic with regards to the historical events they center around. They just read as more authentic and more meaningful than this book. Even the flaws of the characters in 'Half a Yellow Sun' seem less like genuinely sophisticated writing than step 5 in 'how to turn your sophomoric observations about war and politics into a prize winning fictional work'. And don't get me started on Richard, I'm actually suprised to find that no real-world analogue has been listed for that cat since he is so egregiously awful in every way he almost classifies as fan-fiction. I mean, he so clearly represents 'points' that the author wants to hammer us over the head with and ones that she's probably be ashamed to express herself since they lack any nuance whatsoever. Speaking of which... did I mention that British food is awful and Biafran food (which is 'our' food) is simply delicious? Because it is, you know.

Boring characters + boring story/earnest lecture = lame novel. The 'War is Terrible' moral has been done much, much better many, many times before. 'Slaughterhouse 5', off the top of my head.

2 out of 5 stars

GET ON WITH IT! June 23, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

I'm slightly dismayed at all the rave reviews this book has been getting but often this is the way with pretentious people aching to fawn over a prize winner. For the first 200 odd pages the book is desperately dull, with no apparent plot and even though it does begin to move in the second half, by that time I was so peeved with the lack of direction and the lack of any depth to the characters I just couldn't wait for it to end. One of the reviewers on the back of the paperback says words to the effect of 'I rushed the last fifty pages, I was so engrossed.' I rushed the last fifty too - just to get it finished.

5 out of 5 stars

Wow. June 23, 2008
I found this one of the best books I have read in the last few years. Despite having many Nigerian friends and thinking myself pretty au fait with some of Africa's post-colonial history I was horrified to discover that I knew absolutely nothing about Biafra and the attempts of part of Nigeria to secede from the rest of Nigeria in the late 1960s. This book is brilliantly written and takes us through the lives of twin sisters from the upper echelons of society and a houseboy from the other end of the social spectrum as well as those they live with and know. The characters were believable and I found myself genuinely caring about what happened to them. She made the appalling behaviour of people in a time of war very credible and shocking. I couldn't put this down; it was the best book I had read since The Kite Runner..
My only criticism would be the character of Richard, the boyfriend of one of the twin sisters. I found him a little unbelievable and felt he was only in there to show a white person's perspective.... This shouldn't put you off though. I don't believe anyone could dislike this incredibly well-crafted novel.