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"When I get a little money I buy books. If any is left, then I buy food and clothes."
Sweetness in the Belly
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Sweetness in the Belly
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1 journaler for this copy...
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This book actually belongs to my friend Megan, and has been registered here strictly for the purpose of making notes.(Left: from Camilla Gibb's Ethiopian Album.) |
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The narrator in Sweetness in the Belly is Lilly, twenty-seven as the book begins, a white woman who was raised as a child in the 1970s by Muslim guardians first in Morocco, then in the city of Harar in south-eastern Ethiopia. As the novel begins, Lilly is living as a refugee with her friend Amina, also an Ethiopian, in a housing estate in Brixton, South London. There they operate a social service agency for Ethiopian refugees trying to reunite with lost family members.A bald description of the facts of this novel doesn't do justice to its descriptive richness and depth. Lilly's improbable -- though just credible -- life history brings the reader into contact with aspects of Ethiopian experience from which one ordinarily feels distant. Descriptions of disease, female circumcision, gross mistreatment of members of lower social classes by members of the elite and -- finally -- the famine of the early 1970s become more vivid as presented through Lilly's eyes. Lilly's story is certainly captivating -- I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to finish this book. It seemed more difficult for the author to get into the heads of some of the novel's other major characters (with the notable exception of Amina, Lilly's Brixton roommate), which is its one weakness. Sweetness in the Belly was shortlisted for the 2005 Scotiabank Giller Prize (along with Joan Barfoot's Luck), and won the 2006 Trillium Book Award. You can read reviews of the novel in the Guardian here, the Georgia Straight here, Northwest Passages.com here and at Hour.ca here. You can also view author Camilla Gibb's Ethiopian photos here. (Top left: from Camilla Gibb's Ethiopian Album.) |
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