Becoming Abigail
Becoming Abigail
Chris Abani
Akashic Books (2006)
Tags: novella, Gritty Fiction, Horror
novellattt Gritty Fictionttt Horrorttt
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"Compelling and gorgeously written, this is a coming-of-age novella like no other. Chris Abani explores the depths of loss and exploitation with what can only be described as a knowing tenderness. An extraordinary, necessary book."—Cristina Garcia, author of
Dreaming in Cuban
"Abani's voice brings perspective to every moment, turning pain into a beautiful painterly meditation on loss and aloneness."—Aimee Bender, author of
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
“Abani's empathy for Abigail's torn life is matched only by his honesty in portraying it. Nothing at all is held back. A harrowing piece of work.”—Peter Orner, author of
The Esther Stories
Tough, spirited, and fiercely independent Abigail is brought as a teenager to London from Nigeria by relatives who attempt to force her into prostitution. She flees, struggling to find herself in the shadow of a strong but dead mother. In spare yet haunting and lyrical prose reminiscent of Marguerite Duras, Abani brings to life a young woman who lives with a strength and inner light that will enlighten and uplift the reader.
Chris Abani
is a poet and novelist and the author, most recently, of
GraceLand
, which won the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize, a Silver Medal in the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for several other prizes including the
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize. His other prizes include a PEN Freedom-to-Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He lives and teaches in California.
From Publishers Weekly
Abani follows up
GraceLand
, his PEN/Faulkner Award–winning boy's coming-of-age novel, with a searing girl's coming-of-age novella in which a troubled Nigerian teen is threatened with becoming human trade. Abigail's mother died giving birth to her, leaving her, as she grows, with a crippling guilt that drives her to bizarre childhood mourning rituals and, later, with the responsibility of caring for her chronically depressed father. Repeated sexual violations by male relatives and the self-imposed expectation that she live up to her idealized image of her mother create unbearable pain and contradiction. When, at the halfway point of the book, Abigail's father sends her, at age 15 , to live with her cousin-by-marriage, Peter, in London, it's as much to free her from him as to give her more opportunities. But once she arrives, her "cousin" proves malevolent, and her dehumanization begins. Recalling Lucas Moodyson's crushing
Lilya4Ever
, this portrait of a brutalized girl given no control over her life or body, features Abani's lyrical prose (Abigail's father's armchair "smelled of the dreams of everyone who had sat in it") and deft moves between short chapters titled "Then" and "Now"—with the latter offering little promise.
(Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Spare, haunting vignettes of exquisite delicacy tell of horrifying sexual brutality suffered by a young Nigerian girl and of her heartfelt anguish, alternating between "Now" in London, where her relatives try to force her into prostitution, and "Then" back in Ibadan, where her mother dies while giving birth to her. Abigail keeps trying to live up to the brave, independent activist mother, who was a judge at 35, and to make it up to her heartbroken dad for the loss of his wife. Raped by her cousin at age 10, she burns and cuts herself; then things get much worse. She fights back, and her punishment is appalling. Never sensationalized, the continual revelations are more shocking for being quietly told, compressed into taut moments that reveal secrets of cruelty--and of love--up to the last page. A prize-winning writer for
Graceland
(2003), Abani tells a strong young woman's story with graphic empathy.
Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Critical Praise for
GraceLand
by Chris Abani
• Winner: 2005 Hemingway/PEN Prize
• Winner: 2005 Silver Medal, California Book Awards
• Winner: 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
• Finalist: 2005
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize
• Shortlisted for the Best Book Category (Africa Region) of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize
• 25 Best Books of 2004:
Los Angeles Times
• Best Books of 2004:
San Francsico Chronicle
• Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
•
New York Times Book Review
Summer 2004 “Vacation Reading/ Notable Books” Selection
“Extraordinary . . . This book works brilliantly in two ways. As a convincing and unpatronizing record of life in a poor Nigerian slum, and as a frighteningly honest insight into a world skewed by casual violence, it’s wonderful . . . And for all the horrors, there are sweet scenes in
GraceLand
too, and they’re a thousand times better for being entirely unsentimental . . . Lovely.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Chris Abani’s
GraceLand
is a richly detailed, poignant, and utterly fascinating look into another culture and how it is cross-pollinated by our own. It brings to mind the work of Ha Jin in its power and revelation of the new.”
—T. Coraghessan Boyle, author of
Drop City
“Abani’s intensely visual style—and his sense of humor— convert the stuff of hopelessness into the stuff of hope.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“
GraceLand
amply demonstrates that Abani has the energy, ambition, and compassion to create a novel that delineates and illuminates a complicated, dynamic, deeply fractured society.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A wonderfully vivid evocation of a youth coming of age in a country unmoored from its old virtues . . . As for the talented Chris Abani, his imaginary Elvis is as memorable as the original.”
—Chicago Tribune
“
GraceLand
teems with incident, from the seedy crime dens of Maroko to the family melodramas of the Oke clan. But throughout the novel’s action, Abani keeps the reader’s gaze fixed firmly on the detailed and contradictory cast of everyday Nigerian life. Energetic and moving . . . Abani [is] a fluid, closely observant writer.”
—Washington Post
“Abani has written an exhilarating novel, all the more astonishing for its hard-won grace and, yes, redemption.”
—Village Voice
“Ambitious . . . a kind of small miracle.”
—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“It is to be hoped that Mr. Abani’s fine book finds its proper place in the world . . . [Abani’s] perception of the world is beyond or outside the common categories of contemporary fiction and he is able to describe what he perceives compellingly and effectively . . . [Abani captures] the awful, mysterious refusal of life’s discrete pieces to fit.”
—New York Sun
“An intensely vivid portrait of Nigeria that switches deftly between rural and urban life.”
—Boston Globe
“Singular . . . Abani has created a charming and complex character, at once pragmatic and philosophical about his lot in life . . . [and] observes the chaotic tapestry of life in postcolonial Africa with the unjudging eye of a naïve boy.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Abani masterfully gives us a young man who is simultaneously brave, heartless, bright, foolish, lustful, and sadly resigned to fate. In short, a perfectly drawn adolescent . . . Abani’s ear for dialogue and eye for observation lend a lyrical air . . . In depicting how deeply external politics can affect internal thinking,
GraceLand
announces itself as a worthy heir to Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart.
Like that classic of Nigerian literature, it gives a multifaceted, human face to a culture struggling to find its own identity while living with somebody else’s.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“
GraceLand
is an invaluable document.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Remarkable . . . Chris Abani’s striking new novel,
GraceLand
, wins the reader with its concept—an Elvis impersonator in Nigeria—and keeps him with strong storytelling and characterization . . .
GraceLand
marks the debut of a writer with something important to say.”
—New Orleans Times-Picayune
“
GraceLand
paints an often horrific and sometimes pro found portrait . . . Though a work of fiction,
GraceLand
also serves as a history far more powerful and fantastic than any official account of Nigeria’s teetering progress toward democracy.”
—Seattle Weekly
“The book’s juxtaposition between innocence and bleak survival is heartrending . . . Sharp, graphic, and impossible to dismiss.”
—Seattle Times
Becoming Abigail
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
© 2006 Chris Abani
ePUB ISBN-13: 978-1-936-07020-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-888451-94-8
ISBN-10: 1-888451-94-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005934817
All rights reserved
Cover photo by Pierre Bonnard, © 2005 Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York/ADAGP, Paris
Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
[email protected]
www.akashicbooks.com
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