Happiness by Aminatta Forna

Abstract

to save him, and fighting against his father, a general of Palestina plotting to colonize all realities on behalf of the Jews, Lior is unable to decide if he came originally from Palestina or our Israel. He saves the sephirot, haphazardly and accidentally, but must live his life in exile in Israel—his chosen home, if not his real one. Like Tidhar’s other work, Unholy Land is a complex and metatextual narrative, moving between first-, second-, and thirdperson narrators, that theorizes the work speculative fiction does—the possibilities and alternatives it imagines—and questions the worth of the “fantasy” writer in a world where nation-states maintain and legitimize their existence through the oppression of whole groups of people. It is, unsurprisingly , a powerful meditation on the ethics of history and the power of borders, an analogy , no doubt, to the border walls both on the West Bank and in Trump’s presidential promises as much as to the ideologized divides that drive military and state conflict. Unholy Land is a call to imagine and fight for alternatives. Sean Guynes-Vishniac Michigan State University Aminatta Forna Happiness New York. Atlantic Monthly Press. 2018. 368 pages. In writing workshops, I caution students against relying on coincidence to drive plot, as events that happen by chance are generally less interesting than those that develop out of a character’s desires or fears. Yet Aminatta Forna, in her resonant fourth novel, Happiness, successfully employs coincidence on several occasions, in service to broader thematic concerns with connectivity . The book opens with a meet-cute worthy of a Meg Ryan movie—Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist, and Jean, an American scientist, collide on Waterloo Bridge, distracted by a fox named Light Bright, whose behaviors Jean is tasked with observing as part of a study on urban foxes. With this opener, Forna implies that even in a vast urban landscape like London, chance moments of significant connection are possible , even inevitable. The slow-burn relationship that develops between Attila and Jean undergirds the novel, while Forna uses London’s vibrant ecosystem to examine the interconnectivity of living things: human, animal, and vegetal . Attila’s is the most compelling voice. An outsized man in both personality and professional stature, he moves through the world with a captivating surety, breaking into dance when the mood strikes, delivering a controversial keynote address questioning his colleagues’ interpretation of trauma’s effects on people. Next to Attila’s natural magnetism, Jean’s quieter perspective is largely overshadowed. Her plight on behalf of the foxes she studies , as well as the backstory about her past relationships, lack the propulsion of Attila’s sections, which follow his efforts to locate the missing son of a relative as well as his work in conflict zones on behalf of the United Nations. Still, Forna’s prose is so crystalline, her observations about the human condition so psychologically astute, that it is easy to forgive this occasional unevenness. She also dares to make assertions that challenge her Western audience. Analyzing a countryman ’s response to his kidnapping and detention at the hands of Iraqi militants, Attila says: “Our [Africans’] expectations of life . . . are more modest than the European ’s. What I mean to say is that the script of life for most of us is, dare I say, a great deal more fluid . . . in other words, we know shit happens.” In this way, Forna tweaks Western readers ’ smug assumptions about universality , even while reaffirming our common humanity through Jean and Attila’s improbable love. All this confirms that she is a wise and subtle writer who delivers, time and again, stories that confront societal failings and celebrate the personal intimacies that redeem us. Keija Parssinen University of Tulsa The Book of Rīga: A City in Short Fiction Ed. Eva Eglāja-Kristsone & Becca Parkinson. Manchester, UK. Comma Press. 2018. 196 pages. There could not be a more appropriate way to represent Riga than with a short-story collection. The Baltic nations, and Latvia certainly not least among them, have had a disjointed history of independence. Their most recent years of sovereign existence, therefore, have seemed a dream to many—a vision too good to be true...