Title: The Memory of Love
Author: Forna, Aminatta
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 445
Date Read: 27 March 2020
Bookshelves: read, may-return-to
My Rating (out of 5): ⭐⭐⭐
I stopped reading after completing 25% of the book. Hence this review only represents my thoughts up until where I stopped.
I will start by saying Forna is an excellent writer. She does great things with words; which explains why I read (and smiled) through the opening pages with rare enthusiasm. She tells the story of people who do not know of a war about to come. She writes about how these people led their lives and their interconnectedness with each other, perhaps in too much detail. Forna attempted to write about the past and the present in alternate chapters, which is a great idea in theory. However, she lacked the clarity of execution and this was where my problems with the book began.
Past the first chapter, the story begins with unclear intentions, as it took me a while to understand the connection between the different people in the alternating chapters. I had made considerable progress with the book before realising that her intention all along was reconciling the past with the present. But this was not why i stopped reading the book at 25%.
I stopped reading the book because I found that I enjoyed some chapters more than I did others. And it certainly did not help that the different stories took alternating chapters. This meant that my interest crested and troughed like a sinusoid. I pride myself as a consistent person. I am therefore not ready for this level of inter-chapter inconsistency.
I may return to this book. But not soon.