Aminatta FornaRezensionen

#ReadAroundTheWorld. #Sierra Leone

"And there are others still who say love is but a beautiful form of madness."

The Memory of Love is a dual timeline historical fiction set in Sierra Leone in the 1960s and 2000s. The author Aminatta Forne was born in Scotland and raised in Sierra Leone where her father was from. He was executed on trumped up charges when she was only 11. The book is set in a post-war context and deals with both love and trauma. It has been shortlisted for both the Warwick Prize for Writing and the Orange Prize for Fiction and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

British psychologist Adrian Lockheart arrives in Sierra Leone in 2001, after the civil war between government forces and rebel insurgents has ended. The war began in 1991 and left fifty thousand people dead, and 2.5 million displaced. He specialises in PTSD and has been sent there to try and help the Sierra Leoneans process their grief and trauma. Adrian is something of a great white saviour figure, and takes a long time to recognise that he may not actually be wanted there, and that possibly 99% of the population is suffering from what he calls PTSD but they call life. As Forna points out, “War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.”

One of Adrian’s patients is a retired professor Elias Cole whose health is failing. Elias begins to tell the story of his life in the 1960s when he became obsessively enamoured of Saffia, the wife of his colleague Julius. Elias’ obsession has far reaching consequences of betrayal that echo into the next generation.

Adrian also develops a friendship with Kai Mansaray, a local surgeon who also suffers nightmares related to war-time trauma and a broken relationship with Nenebah. Adrian becomes involved with musician Mamakaye despite having a wife and child back in England. This relationship draws the three characters together in an unexpected turn of events.

This was a beautifully written book with well-fleshed out characters. The audio-narration by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
was excellent. My only difficulty was I didn’t like many of them. Elias was entitled and manipulative, Adrian was just meh. The women in the story may have been more likeable, but sadly did not have a voice of their own, their stories being told by the men. I would definitely read another book by this author.

At first this is a straightforward story, narrated by Duro, handyman and hunter, as he comes to the aid of an Englishwoman, Laura who is attempting to refurbish her Croatian holiday home. Gradually secrets are unpicked and revealed. Small-town rivalries. Duro's first and best love, Anka. And the atrocities of civil war, and what that does to a community that had previously lived together more or less in harmony. Forna creates a vivid landscape, describes dark secrets, long-festering divisions. This is a rewarding, immersive book whose initial apparently simple story line evolves into something richer and more complex. A book to re-read.

This multi-themed novel impressed me with the depth of the characters and their missions. Attila, a psychiatrist from Ghana who has been working around the globe on hostage situations and helping those caught up in violence and war to recover, travels to London to deliver the keynote address at a major conference. Jane, a biologist specializing in wolves and foxes, has left her ex-husband and son back in Western Massachusetts to research the lives of urban foxes in London. Jane literally collides with Attila on Waterloo Bridge as she is following one of her foxes, and they continue to meet for a week, first coincidentally and then purposefully, as they try to manage their strong attraction to each other. When Attila's niece is taken by immigration police and her ten year old son disappears, he, Jane and a legion of genial local African hotel workers assist in the quest. Simultaneously, Attila's research partner Rosie is withering away from dementia as he puzzles through his shifting ideas about PTSD, his area of expertise. Jane is trying to protect her urban foxes as they seem to be initiating threatening and harmful interactions with humans. And all the while, they are gravitating towards each other, despite Attila's heartache for his wife, who had died suddenly, and Jane's concern about her adult son, who seems to be turning away from her. Their week in London alternates with their back stories, and it all flows together, resolving in a satisfying ending (apart from an awkwardly narrated single sexual episode). This is a truly thoughtful work deserving of deliberate, dedicated attention from the reader.

Quote: "The punishment meted out to Adam and Eve by their creator for eating the forbidden fruit was not to be cast out of Eden, nor the knowledge of their own nakedness, but the gift of an intelligence great enough to be able to imagine their own deaths, the awful foreknowledge all humans possessed, not only in the moment of it happening but for every day of their lives."½

This book takes the reader on a journey through many countries and has a moving timeline which manages to progress the story. As we learn about the lead characters backstories we develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of their actions.½

A quiet meditative read. Beautifully written and full of valuable truths about humanity and the natural world delivered with precision by extraordinarily real-feeling characters. I particularly loved learning more about foxes and coyotes living among us.

Aminatta Forna talks about many aspects of her life. She has lived an interesting life. She has lived in Africa, the USA and the Middle East.A meditation on what a society's treatment of animals tells us about its principles.

Well-written and engaging. I always appreciate approaching war as the stories (and losses) of individuals. I did have some reservations, I wanted to keep reading but also not to. Without any other clues I'm assuming this was just not the right time and mood.

Best for:
People who enjoy sweet, thoughtful books.

In a nutshell:
Two lives collide on the streets of South London.

Worth quoting:
“He wondered if one day every feeling in the world would be identified, cataloged and marked for eradication. Was there no human experience that did not merit treatment now?”

Why I chose it:
It was recommended to me as part of a book spa.

What it left me feeling:
Contemplative

Review:
This is an interesting book that I found more challenging to read than I expected.

The plot: Attila is a psychiatrist originally from Ghana who has traveled around the world to various war zones and other areas filled with trauma, assisting the traumatised. He is in London, where he once lived, for a conference. Jean is a scientist originally from the US who tracks foxes in South London. Their lives intersect when the son of a family friend of Attila’s goes missing after his mother is wrongly detained by immigration authorities.

The book takes place primarily where I live and work, so I recognize so many of the geographic markers, which made the book so vivid for me - I go for runs in the part where Jean is tracking foxes, walk along the street where Attila meets with someone caring for another friend of his. I regularly see foxes on my morning runs, and had a fox den with three pups behind the garden of my first flat here. So in some ways I could see the scenes of the book playing out as clearly as if I were watching them on screen.

The book deals with so many themes - aging, family, community, immigration, prejudice, racism, love, loss, trauma. It looks at the conclusions people jump to, and the pathologizing of human emotions. It explores how people relate to people they love, how the decisions we make can take us far from what we once thought of as home, and how we build new lives.

The book moves through time a lot, but I found it a bit harder to follow in this book than in similar ones. That didn’t make it bad, or wrong, and I can see the thread and the reasoning behind it, but I’m not sure it worked that well for me. That said, it is definitely a book that I will think about for a long while.

Recommend to a Friend / Keep / Donate it / Toss it:
Donate it

Ghanian psychiatrist Attila is in London to deliver the keynote address at a professional conference. Wildlife researcher Jean is in London to study the urban fox population. A chance meeting on a London bridge develops into a new friendship, and perhaps something more, as the two strangers bond over the search for a missing boy.

I love the community that forms in this urban novel. Jean has developed a network of service workers – hotel doormen, street sweepers, and traffic wardens among them – who band together in the common cause of searching for the lost boy. The actions and interactions of these characters challenged me to pay closer attention to my surroundings and the people I encounter on a daily basis.

I am intrigued by the psychological aspects of Forna’s writing. As in The Memory of Love, one of Forna’s main characters is a psychiatrist specializing in post-traumatic stress in the aftermath of war. Forna acknowledges the influence of Boris Cyrulnik’s Resilience in shaping her story. I would love to explore this novel with a reading group. I think it could spark a great conversation about resilience and overcoming past trauma.½

Reason read: British author challege
First book by this author for me. I thought she was interesting. Two main characters; Jean and Attila. Attila is a psychiatrist specialists in PTSD. Jean is an American who is studying urban foxes in London. Jean and Attila meet by chance and then they gradually become good friends. Forna's writing is interesting. I enjoyed the wild life that is sprinkled through the novel but in the end, I am not sure that this came to any satisfying conclusion for me. The diagnosis of PTSD is also explored and the over use of it rather than acknowledges that grief, anger, sadness is normal and real and not a diagnosis. So it's a melding of wild life reporting, review of psychiatric diagnosis, and two characters who come together and appreciate each other.½

Happiness is a beautifully written novel about trauma, resilience, cultural differences, coexistence, and the nature of happiness. The author explores these themes through examining conflicts between humans and animals and humans with each other. American wildlife biologist Jean Turane has significant experience with animals and the natural world. She has researched coyotes in the US and is now studying urban foxes in London. Attila Asare has considerable experience treating people in war zones, specializing in PTSD. He is in London as a keynote speaker and arrives early to reconnect with his niece, Ama, and a former colleague who suffers from early-onset Alzheimer’s. Jean and Attila meet by literally bumping into each other.

The plot revolves around the search for Ama’s son, who runs away when his mother is wrongfully detained for immigration issues. One of the highlights of the story is the network of African and European immigrants, consisting of doormen, security guards, street performers, and traffic wardens, that work together with Attila and Jean to find the boy. Forna’s characters are authentic and memorable. The story is non-linear and includes many flashbacks to provide context for the lives led by Jean and Attila prior to their meeting. There are many threads to track, which can sometimes feel a bit scattered, but they all converge in the end. Attila ultimately realizes something profound about the nature of happiness.

The author’s message is a positive one. She is encouraging people to adapt to change, overcome trauma, embrace the natural environment, and find ways to peacefully coexist. This is the first book I have read by Aminatta Forna. I found it very impressive and look forward to reading more of her work.

“[A] certain giddiness had come over my aunts as if the time spent remembering the girls and women they once had been had invigorated the spirits. They'd lifted the past from their own shoulders and handed it to me. I didn't see it as a burden, not at all. Rather a treasure trove of memories, of lives lived and lessons learned, of terrors faced and pleasures tasted.” – Aminatta Forna, Ancestor Stones

Set in Sierra Leone, this book tells the stories of four women, half-sisters, as they relate significant events in their lives to their niece, Abie. The four women share the same father, who eventually had eleven wives. It takes place over the majority of the 20th century (1926-1999), as the country evolves through colonialism, civil war, and sovereignty. Abie travels from her current home in England to west Africa to her family’s coffee plantation, where she traces the family history through the lives of these four aunts.

The narrative is rich in details of the Sierra Leone’s culture and natural environment. It is a patchwork of various stories that provide an overall impression of the history and changes over time within the country from the female perspective. It occasionally feels fragmented due to the many shifts in perspectives and time periods. This is my second novel by Aminatta Forna and I am turning into an enthusiastic fan. Her writing style is richly textured with details while not losing sight of the larger picture.

‘This is their reality. And who is going to come and give the people who live here therapy to cope with this?’ asks Attila and waves a hand at the view. ‘You call it a disorder, my friend. We call it life.’ – Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love

In 2001, British psychologist Adrian Lockheart volunteers to help with mental health services in Sierra Leone, where residents are recovering from civil war. Terminally ill, aging academic Elias Cole, one of Adrian’s patients, tells Adrian his story of love and loss, almost as if he is seeking absolution. Adrian develops a friendship with local surgeon, Kai Mansaray, who is haunted by his own past traumas and lost love. Adrian is the focal point for the convergence of these three storylines.

This is a novel that works on multiple levels. It is a story of obsessive love, betrayal, the transience of memories, the recent history of Sierra Leone (1960s to 2000s), political corruption, and the traumatic impact of war on mind, body, and soul. Forna expertly weaves the storylines together and the common elements become more pronounced as the story progresses. The writing is stunning – elegant, expressive, and emotionally convincing. It is a pleasing blend of plot and characterization. I found it engrossing and kept trying to figure out all the interconnections. I am not sure what else I could ask from a book.

Be aware that it contacts graphic descriptions of war-related violence and symptoms of PTSD.

“The account I read was not the way I had imagined my father's trial at all. I imagined – well, what exactly? That the prosecution's case would have been much more ingenious, more inventive, I suppose. Instead there it was: seven volumes in which the end was written before the start, in which every word demonstrated a contempt for the truth that was brutal, undisguised and arrogant. My father had not been facing one man or even a government, but a system, an entire order, in which everyone from judge to juror knew their role.”

This book is Aminatta Forna’s memoir of her father, Dr. Mohamed Sorie Forna, former minister of finance in Sierra Leone, who was executed on trumped up charges of treason in 1975. Haunted by the past, she decided to reconstruct exactly what happened and why. She engaged relatives and tracked down people involved in order to discover the truth. In the process, she conveys the tortured history of Sierra Leone from the 1960s to 2000s.

The book is part childhood memoir, as the author was a child when her father was killed. I could almost feel her sense of anguish as I read it. She occasionally gets into more detail than perhaps was necessary for the reader, and I probably will not remember many of the names cited, but I am certain it was necessary for the author as she worked through such a personal traumatic experience. I have now read five books by Aminatta Forna, and I always enjoy the author’s elegant writing style.

“There are three words to denote the passing of time: today, tomorrow and yesterday. Everything else is viewed in relation to those three positions and extends only a few days in either direction, perhaps because life in rural Africa is so full of hazards that people prefer to live in the here and now rather than speculate on an uncertain future.”

Duro is a handyman living in a small Croatian village. He is hired by Laura, an English woman whose family has purchased a vacation home in the area. The story is told in first person by Duro. It is about an outsider, Laura, coming to a place where she and her family are not familiar with the history, and expecting to have a "nice family holiday," not recognizing that the area is still recovering from trauma. The arrival of these outsiders is the catalyst for Duro to revisit his memories, which he has suppressed. It gradually changes into a tale of war and betrayal.

It is a character study of what happens to traumatized people after war, where people chose sides, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and resulting in lingering aftereffects. It may be a good idea to read up on the history of the Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian wars beforehand, if you are not already familiar with it, since the author does not provide many details.

It is a slowly developing story, where the reader gradually becomes aware of Duro’s past. This method is effective in spurring the reader’s curiosity. I very much enjoy Aminatta Forna’s writing style. She has previously explored similar themes in another part of the world (Sierra Leone).

Forna is one of my favorite authors. I can also recommend:
- [b:The Memory of Love|10318484|The Memory of Love|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328310321l/10318484._SX50_.jpg|10719873] - 5 stars- My Review
- [b:Happiness|36110370|Happiness|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1503497184l/36110370._SY75_.jpg|56848330] - 4 stars - My Review
- [b:The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion|55836545|The Window Seat Notes from a Life in Motion|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618283461l/55836545._SY75_.jpg|87054869] - 4 stars - My Review
- [b:Ancestor Stones: A Novel|39949873|Ancestor Stones|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1524714764l/39949873._SY75_.jpg|248566] - 4 stars - My Review
- [b:The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest|22465719|The Devil that Danced on the Water A Daughter's Quest|Aminatta Forna|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1402687593l/22465719._SY75_.jpg|105956] - 4 stars - My Review

Non-fiction series of essays the author has written for various publications over the years, plus several new pieces, now consolidated into one place. The common theme is travel or migration, either by choice or necessity. Forna has been a world traveler from a young age. She has lived in a number of places around the globe, including Sierra Leone, Iran, Scotland, England, and the US. Her stories take the reader on a virtual trip to these locales, and others she has visited, portraying vignettes of her experiences in each location.

I have read three of Forna’s novels, and very much enjoy her expressive writing style, so I knew I was in for a treat. She switches seamlessly from serious subjects to humorous anecdotes. She conveys insightful comments about our society. There are a number of essays related to animals – dogs and chimpanzees in Sierra Leone, foxes in London, puffins in Scotland, deer and coyotes in the US. These essays encompass topics such as memories, movement, identity, race, gender, and voice. Highly recommended!

I received an advanced reader’s copy from the publisher via NetGalley. This book is due for publication in May, 2021.

How would you feel about buying a holiday home in a former war zone?

Duro lives in Gost, a small town in Croatia. He lives alone and sometimes struggles to make ends meet, so when Laura and her family come from England to stay in a house which has been empty for some years, he sees an opportunity for a few weeks of building work, a chance to earn some money. He chats to Laura as he helps to renovate her property, and he listens to her talk. However, it is soon obvious that Duro doesn't talk about everything. This beautiful town has some very dark secrets - in the present it is 2007, just 12 years after the end of the war between Croatia and Serbia.

Forna was born in Scotland but her father was from Sierra Leone, where her first two novels and a memoir are set. In a radio interview, she has expressed her shock that people who wouldn't consider Sierra Leone as a holiday destination are happy to snap up cheap properties in Croatia with no concern or curiosity about the war there in the 1990s.

The Hired Man is beautifully written and thought provoking - Duro's story about his past unfolds quite slowly, and in the meantime there is a portrait of life in a town which has not really come to terms with its troubled past.

Reviewed through the Amazon Vine programme, 15 May 2013½

Aminatta’s Scottish mother met her Sierra Leonean future husband Mohamed Forna while he was a medical student studying in Britain. He’d always planned to return to his native land to help his fellow countrymen.
And with wife and small children in tow, he did exactly that. But he soon found that healing the bodies of his countrymen was not enough. And so, as colonialism was ending in Sierra Leone, he threw his political fortunes in with the All People’s Congress (APC) led by Sjaka Stevens.

Forma served as Minister of Finance in Stevens’s new government. However, the new government was plagued by political coups and dissention, and quickly devolved into corruption and violence. Forma resigned in protest. He soon became an outspoken critic of Stevens’ plan to form an autocratic one party government.
Eventually Forma was arrested on false charges, imprisoned, tortured, and convicted by false testimony of other torture victims. He was tried, condemned and executed.

This is the story that his daughter Aminatta tells of returning to Sierra Leone decades later and trying to put together the pieces of her father’s life. It’s a story of reconciling her childhood memories with a story of corruption and lies during a failed attempt at democracy.

I found this memoir well written and page turning. Besides being an insightful look at a post colonial African nation, it also has lessons for current democracies as they struggle to preserve their freedoms.

The novel is set in Sierra Leone, at various times in its tumultuous history. There are two main story lines. Adrian Lockheart is a British psychologist who takes a government posting in the capital city near the turn of the 21st century, hoping to help people suffering from PTSD in the wake of civil unrest and outright war. He is less than successful at this, in great part because he completely lacks understanding of the nature of the problem his prospective patients face. What would “normal” mean to a population that is continuing to live with the aftereffects of multiple conflicts, political upheaval and widespread deprivation? This is pointed out to Adrian by two local residents who each become very important to him: Kai, an orthopedic surgeon who is a victim of trauma himself; and Mamakay, a woman with whom Adrian falls in love. He is also drawn into the history of a dying man, Elias Cole, who tells Adrian his version of revolutionary events of the 1970s, somewhat in the manner of a man seeking absolution for his role.

My knowledge of the history of this country was minimal to non-existent before I picked up The Memory of Love. I found myself floundering a bit, precisely because I could not put the characters and their background into any familiar context. An early reference to book titles intrigued me. I looked them up, and they are actual books. I did a little more research, and penciled in a rough time-line inside the cover of my paperback for ready reference. This helped me immensely, and I am extremely glad I took the trouble. But....BUT....did the author expect her readers to be better informed than I was going in? And, in general, were they? SInce the book was published in Britain, and since Sierra Leone was once a British colony/protectorate, and later an independent member of the Commonwealth, I suspect the answer may be "yes". In general, I have no problem with an author giving their readers the benefit of the doubt this way, or even expecting them to do their homework before or while reading. It did make for a bit of a slow start for me, but I am more than happy that I put in the extra effort, and stuck with the story.
I thought the parts where Adrian was confronted with the Big Question---what am I doing here?---were very revealing. The curse of "the white man's burden" acting on him, in his naivete about what his sort of therapy might accomplish under the existing circumstances. Perhaps some actual personal guilt, as his own grandfather had been a part of the colonial government.
Having finished the novel, I considered whether to give it 4 1/2 or 5 stars. The hesitation came from one or two elements that left me wondering "why" and from pondering whether being left with that question is a good thing or a bad thing. I settled on 4 ½, but that is not to say that I didn’t find this an incredibly powerful read. I may return to it one day, and a second read could very well cause me to bestow that last half star.½

The human plot is good,
though readers oddly get hardly anything about what Attica is thinking about Jean until toward the ending.

HAPPINESS would rate Five Stars if the author had not opened with gruesome Animal Cruelty,
a pattern which unfortunately continues throughout the book. A lot got skipped.

Silver Man, the Streetwalkers, and all the other West African Workers who helped to find Tano made remarkable reading,
as well, readers get a tour of London Streets highlighted by nature, animals, and birds
and Jean's "Wild Spaces" gardens. Was there a tall wall or fence around her roof top?

When Attica visited Rosie, why didn't he check to see if the bird that flew into the window
was alive - or foreshadowed her death...?

Why did Jean never talk with Attica about the bizarre behavior of the woman she was
creating a garden for? He could have given expert advice that actually could have helped.

Jean is a wildlife biologist. Her interest are the small predators that make their homes in urban environments. Her previous study concerned urban coyotes in the United States. She’s currently studying foxes in London.

Both studies drew backlash from locals who feared having wildlife in such close proximity to their pets and children. Even if Jean can show their fears are greatly exaggerated, the hatred of coyotes and foxes continue.

Her new-found career led to a breakdown in her marriage and separation from her now grown son.

And then, following foxes in the middle of the nights, she meets Atilla a psychiatrist from Ghana who is giving a keynote speech in London on the trauma that humans, especially children, endure in the middle of civil war.

Atilla is out in the night, searching for his missing nephew, who has been caught up in a false immigration sweep and living on the London streets. And then there’s Attila’s dear friend and love, lost in a world of Alzheimer’s and now dying.

What is stress? Does all stress lead to trauma? How does one move forward?

Well drawn, complex characters . Stories within stories to draw you onward.

There were times I thought this novel was very good, but ultimately, it was just okay. It dragged on too slowly and was a bit confusing to follow. It's too bad, because the prose was lovely.

Excellent book of essays by a prose master. I really enjoyed her travel experiences and had no idea she lived in Iran as well as Sierra Leone, London and the U.S. I particularly liked the ones relating her experiences caring for abandoned dogs in Africa, foxes in London, and the Trump inauguration which she described in this way in an email to a friend: "what if you had an inauguration and no one came?" comparing it to the mobs for Obama's inauguration.

“…I’d said that although we lived at a time when public and media attention was focused on those who migrated, I was interested in what it was that compelled people to stay in the place they first called home or hame. Ideas of home produce a cultural schism, for home is at once the focus of great nostalgia for some, equally for others home is a place they can’t wait to get away from. Home is somewhere you escape from, grow out of, return to. Yet even those who revere the idea of home rarely seem able adequately to describe it. I am often asked this question, Where is home? And sense that my efforts at a reply are found wanting. The reason for this, I believe, is a conceptual mismatch between me and my interlocutor on the definition of the word home. For them, those people who want an answer from me, I have discovered two things to be consistently true: home is always located in the past. It is not enough for me to say, ‘Arlington.’ Also, it is a noun used strictly in the singular. The word ‘homes’ is antithetical to the idea of home.”

p.124 from the essay “Hame”

This is a collection of seventeen essays, and they are all very good; several of them are excellent. All of them made me think. The only other work I have read by this author is [Happiness], which I highly recommend. For those of you who have read that one, there is an essay in this collection that will show you insights into how the portions about the foxes living in cities began to germinate in Forna's head. Aminatta Forna and I are of an age, and so her life experiences speak to me even though we have lived very different lives. In this collection, she reflects on the year 1979 when she was living in Tehran and had a front row seat to the Shah of Iran leaving and the Ayatollah Khomeini returning and the events that lead to the Iranian students storming the US Embassy and taking hostages.

"I was fourteen, and about to see a part of somebody else's history being made. I wish I had been older, wiser. I wish I could remember more, had paid more attention, understood more - but then I remind myself that I was not alone. What happened in 1979 has happened many times before and many times since, in places where people have set themselves free and believed with all their hearts that the freedom they had fought for was real and lasting, only to be recaptured."

She also writes about sexual harassment and insomnia and the meaning of home. She writes about childhood and about how some things that hurt us write on the slate of who we are and can never be erased. It is a lesson in perspective from a woman whom I share so much and yet so little with - her life experiences are so much bigger and so much broader than mine, and yet we are both women, both daughters and mothers, both in our fifties...I hope she writes more like this one and continues to share her journey with us.½

Stunning. I’m sad to finish this book as I’ll really miss the characters. The writing is fresh, lyrical in parts, and never dull. Such a treat.