The novel will shock, surprise and move the reader as, along with Mojisola, they discover the intimacies of three lives, all very different though inextricably joined. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
When Mojisola and Titus’s daughter Yinka dies suddenly in Johannesburg, Mojisola leaves Cape Town to try to uncover Yinka’s existence in the city – something it seems her parents knew little about before her death.
This is the basis of Yewande Omotoso’s novel An Unusual Grief.
Initially, Mojisola draws a blank as the intense privacy with which Yinka lived her all-too-short life resists her mother’s attempts to break through the barriers. And we slowly discover that these barriers between mother and daughter have been there for a long time.
But Mojisola begins to get to know people who Yinka knew, including Zelda, the acerbic landlady of Yinka’s flat which Mojisola now occupies. And she encounters other people and situations which will startle her, and the reader. As she penetrates the world Yinka inhabited, she begins to learn more about herself and the life she has allowed herself to lead since she became a wife and mother. The problems in her marriage to Titus, which have been brought to a head by Yinka’s death, are revealed as Mojisola begins to get a clearer picture of her own existence and that of her entire family, and her past.
She also comes to realise, as she traces Yinka’s footsteps around Johannesburg, that the pieces she discovers can never be the whole life, not hers, not Yinka’s, not Titus’s. As she says, you cannot read the story when you are the book. But there is a catharsis for Mojisola in the process of beginning to understand, at least in part, her daughter, herself and even her husband.
An Unusual Grief is beautifully written but the poetry of the writing never impedes the telling of the story, which is compelling. It is undeniably a sad tale, though there are moments of humour, particularly in Mojisola’s relationship with Zelda. The novel will shock, surprise and move the reader as, along with Mojisola, they discover the intimacies of three lives, all very different though inextricably joined. - Margaret von Klemperer
An Unusual Grief is published by Cassava Republic Press ISBN
978-1-913175-13-9
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