Roberto von Archimboldi<p>Just finished 'Not Without Flowers' by Amma Darko. It is definitely very readable. Some of the dialogue feels clunky, but only some. It feels like it doesn't quite have a moral vision though it is reaching for one. It reminds me of Soyinka, though with less big grammar and without Soyinka's metaphysical and political vision. ( This could just be me lumping West African writers together, because you know that old racism thing). </p><p>Darko gets extra points for not taking time to explain her Ghanian cultural references. I suspect other authors from the region get pressured into it by editors and publishers. It really grinds my gears when the narrator explains things that may be unfamiliar to an English reader like me. You are not writing ethnographic studies for tourists. You are writing, in this case, a Ghanaian novel. So I appreciated her consistency there. </p><p>It is also sad and scary. It is a cast of sad broken people. In Soyinka's hands they would have looked for redemption and failed to find it without extinguishing hope. In Darko's, I think, that they somehow find absolution or punishment. The ending feels weak. Having said that the build up towards the ending is magnificent. The various characters story arcs come together in a well worked crisis. It is the crisis itself that I'm unsure about.</p><p>Her plotting and pacing is great. The story telling pleasantly demanding. It was a Sunday well spent.</p><p><a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/booksodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>booksodon</span></a>, <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>bookstodon</span></a></span> <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/AmmaDarko" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AmmaDarko</span></a>, <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/NotWithoutFlowers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NotWithoutFlowers</span></a>, <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Darko" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Darko</span></a>, <a href="https://kolektiva.social/tags/Ghana" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Ghana</span></a></p>