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Love Is Power, Or Something Like That: Stories (2013)

by A. Igoni Barrett(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1555976409 (ISBN13: 9781555976408)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Graywolf Press

review 1: Without a doubt, this was the best book I picked up last year. Not only is the writing alive - with precise descriptions that crackle and leap off the page - but there is an attention here to characters that I can recognize (fully-formed African characters preoccupied with the problems of day-to-day living and loving); laugh-out-loud humor; unusual points of view; a sympathy for the characters' failings, and an overall rigor to the writing, as though the author is convinced that the stories he has to tell are new, fresh, relevant. And indeed they are! My favorites in this collection are: "Love Is Power, or Something Like That," "My Smelling Mouth Problem" (so ridiculously funny!), "The Little Girl with Budding Breasts and a Bubblegum Laugh" (so bold! so disturbing!), and "... moreGodspeed and Perpetua" (deeply moving). And now it has occurred to me that I have just listed half the stories in the collection. Here's the truth: each story is delicious in its own way. Barrett has outdone himself. Infinitely re-readable.
review 2: This forthcoming collection crackles with the chaotic energy of modern Nigeria. A young boy responsible for his family while his alcoholic mother flounders, a man who can't open his mouth for fear of his overwhelming halitosis, a man who pretends to be a woman to lure unsuspecting men from around the world, a corrupt police officer trying to understand the wrong in him... each story reveals people's deepest flaws, and the ways they try to overcome them. less

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