she will just die.' It's scenes like this told from such a state of innocence that left me completely stunned; more so than the same scene relayed in an adult voice ever could have done.
And then, just as you are settling in to the pattern of Darling's naive, childish voice, Bulawayo takes a great swoop into the air, and becomes a bird soaring above the scene, observing people across Zimbabwe in an expansive, poetic narrative. 'They appeared single file, like ants. In swarms, like flies. In angry waves, like a wretched sea,' she says of the refugees forced out of their homes across the country. These huge, abstract scenes are as moving as Darling's closely observed ones, and both work all the better for being placed one directly after the other.
And then comes the second half of We Need..., which, you guessed it, takes another great leap and changes again. The novel is suddenly set in America, where Darling has moved to to join her aunt and to start a new life. Darling's standard of living vastly improves, but having been uprooted from her family, home and country, she doesn't seem any happier for it. It's almost as sad a situation as her previous one, but Darling just carries on, because that's all that can be done.
Herein lies my issue with We Need...: life just carries on. Read this book for excellent writing and acute observations, read it for two richly drawn portraits of two vastly different countries, read it for the smart, funny, naive protagonist. But don't read it expecting any story beyond day-to-day happenings, or for any climactic scene. This structure may be because the book is largely autobiographical, and presumably for Bulawayo, life in the US after moving from Zimbabwe has just carried on. But personally I like a good culmination of events, and found it a bit frustrating that there was none.
Florence
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with the subject line 'The Book Worm'
But nevertheless this is a brave, shocking, funny, tragic novel, and Darling's young voice describing events well beyond her years is one that deserves to be heard.