We Need New Names is a lush, language-rich narration by a young African girl who gradually becomes an expat in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The narrator's voice has a wonderful innocence, even as she and her playmates (I'd say schoolmates but the teachers have all left the country and the school closed) pl...
I hated this book. It was tolerably written. It was just so, so, I can't find the word...smugly pleased with its dreary on-trendness...oh yeah, HIP! That's the word. Hip. http://tinyurl.com/m4h3ns9 Last year's Book Prize panel put this one on the map. I genuinely do not know why it was on any of...
3.5 stars, maybe four - well worth a read. I’m sometimes skeptical of child narrators, but Darling is an effective protagonist; her raw, matter-of-fact depiction of her childhood in Zimbabwe casually contrasts her innocent curiosity and the games she and her friends play with the violence they encou...
Linked short stories generally follow Darling, a Zimbabwean girl, from her hungry, conflict-saturated childhood in Africa to her dislocated/relocated young adulthood in the U.S. Most of the sections worked well, though the end point of some didn't resonate or satisfy. There are some intrusions of a ...
Occasionally, I come across a book that is difficult for me to say much about. I finish the book, put it aside, scratch my head as I try to piece together what it is exactly I feel about what I just read. Obviously, I didn't love it, but I also didn't hate it. It just didn't resonate with me and I c...
Reviewed by Sheila Trask for Readers' Favorite A sad and beautiful coming-of-age story of a child and her country, NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel, We Need New Names, takes us to Zimbabwe during the Mugabe era. Here, 10-year-old Darling copes with extreme poverty, hunger, and near-homelessness in her iron...
A classic immigrant tale. That hooked me from page one. Now the book is not perfect and I found the voice of the child Darling, in the first part of the book incredible. At one point I read in horror in the anticipation as the children were wading in truly scary moment in there life. It was so ...
EDIT 10/09/2013:- Oh boy! This has been included in the shortlist despite my misgivings to the contrary. Heartiest congratulations to NoViolet Bulawayo! Books like this one have me fumbling around for the right approach to review them, because they try to cram in too much within the scope of a regul...
The author of We Need New Names chose her own new name for her writing. ‘NoViolet’ is a tribute to Elizabeth Tshele’s mother Violet, who died when Elizabeth was only 18 months old.She also chose interesting names for some of the characters in this book set in Zimbabwe. The story is a first person ...
This was a heart-wrenching read. Though I pushed myself to read 2/3 of it all at once to meet a deadline, I would have had to do this even on my own time. There was no where to stop comfortably. From the moment you meet Darling, you are endeared to her. She is an honest, rambunctious and curious ten...
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