book review: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
The backstory: The Memory of Love was shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize My thoughts: Fresh off my experience of loving Tea Obreht's writing in The Tiger's Wife but being somewhat disenchanted with the novel itself, I started The Memory of Love and had a remarkably similar experience. The Memory of Love features several main characters: Adrian, a British psychologist; Kai, a young surgeon; and Elias, an elderly man who once was a professor enamored with Saffia, who was married to Julius. The book is set in Sierra Leone just after its civil war. Reading The Memory of Love, I realized that despite how much I love multiple narrators, when I'm much more interested in one part of the story, it makes the rest of it drag somewhat. I thoroughly enjoyed the tales of Elias, but Adrian and Kai bored me somewhat. All the characters benefited from Forna's beautiful writing also being filled with rich metaphors and truth. I ...