Rating: 
Summary: Electrifying read
Review: Purple Hibiscus is a beautiful story. The plot is based on a 14 year-old who grew up under the stifling patronage of a stern father. Her domineering father frequently physically abused his family alongside her, creating terror at home and stunting the psychological growth of his children. Against the backdrop of the deterioration of the socio-economic and political life of Nigeria as it undergoes a military coup, the life Kambili knows is shattered and she has to seek for refuge in the home of her aunt. Kambili the sheltered but highly restricted child, who never thought of herself as lucky and who had earlier been absconded by her peers and cousin because of her supposedly privileges, learns to assert herself and becomes a beloved character, a character who easily understood the plight of those around her.. Kambili at first came to terms with her father as someone who regarded himself as a pillar of the community and someone she genuinely loved. Even the emotional and physical pains he inflicted are seen only as a gesture of love for her own good, but later she comes to consider his actions as abnormal. With its vivid portrayal of Nigerian life, and brilliant dissection of the characters , this novel moves at a pace which is electrifying.Also recommended: DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE,GRACELAND, THE USURPER AND OTHER STORIES
Rating:
Summary: An astonishing debut
Review: Purple Hibiscus is a must read for anyone who is interested in family dynamics, the nature of faith and freedom, or modern-day Nigeria. An excellent debut.
Rating:
Summary: An Extremely Engaging First Novel
Review: Purple Hibiscus is a vivid, beautifully written novel about a 14 year-old girl named Kambili growing up in a stifling Catholic household in Nigeria. The story pairs the collapse of the family's strong patriarch who frequently physically abuses his family alongside with the deterioration of the Nigerian society's infrastructure as it undergoes a military coup. Kambili is a very sheltered child who is incredibly insecure because of the repressive regimen her father forces her to follow. Yet, she is looked down upon by her peers and initially scorned by her outspoken cousin because she is viewed as a privileged snob. When she visits her aunt and cousins she learns how to assert herself and become a more independent individual.
Adichie presents you with a portrait of domestic violence very much from the inside. We see the father through Kambili's eyes as a pillar of the community and someone she genuinely loves. Therefore the abuse he administers is seen only as a gesture of love for her own good. It's only when Kambili is pulled out of this horrific environment that she is able to see how wrong it is and understand that this abuse is not normal. While this novel really involves you in the struggles of its characters, it also shows you a lot about the complex political and religious struggles occurring in Nigeria. It's one of those wonderful stories that can broaden your perspective while being incredibly emotionally engaging. This is an amazing first novel from such a young writer and I hope she will continue to write many more books with as much heart and soul as Purple Hibiscus.
Rating:
Summary: Purple Hibiscus Inspires
Review: Purple Hibiscus
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
2003, 307 pages (hard)
ISBN # 1-56512-387-5
5 Star Rating Dee Stewart, Reviewer Fifteen year old, Kambili barely breaths, speaks or exists in her privileged, but suffocating Nigerian home with her brother Jaja and her parents. Kambili's father's dominance is felt not only in her home, but in all of Nigeria except for her Aunt Ifeoma. When Aunt Ifeoma persuades Kambili's father to allow the children to visit her in Nsukka, while they are on holiday. Kambili and Jaja's minds blossom into free spirits. JaJa learns the beauty of life, while Kambili falls in love with a handsome young priest. How will these two go back to such a strict and abusive home when they have been surrounded around love and the beauty of the purple hibiscus? Adichie writes so effortlessly that you find yourself transported to Nigeria, smelling the rich soil and tasting the flowers. Purple hibiscus is a superbly written work. It is enchanting and engaging all at once. One of my favorite lines in the book is :
I love short works of fiction be it short stories or novellas, because they cut to the chase and tell the story matter-of-factly. Yet, this novel does the same thing. From the first page, you know the conflict, the characters and a hint at the ending all at once. After the third page, I was excited to know the end. It was a page turner, which forced me to either stay up late at night or throw the book on the floor, to make myself go to sleep. This book will haunt you for months after you have put it down. Adichie does an excellent job at fleshing out her characters. She makes them real at an instant. Kambili is so shy and afraid to live that you want to take a flight to Nigeria and remove her from that mansion. JaJa is so strong and silent that you want to shake him to make him scream. Their mother, Beatrice is such a caterpillar. You wait for her to become the butterfly and I can see Father Adami's clay colored skin and brilliant smile in my mind, behind my eyes. Adichie makes these characters so likable and so real. This book and its cover reminds me of Olympia Vernon's Eden, but it is set in Nigeria not Mississipi. Both books brilliantly tell the story of people of African descent in such a magical way that you feel power in every page. You feel this undying will that manifests the struggle of African people, their struggle to be heard, recognized and loved. Purple Hibiscus is as timeless as the sand and as beautiful as the flower it is named after.
Rating:
Summary: "Intricately Cultural and Exposing"
Review: The innocent child's view shown here of how culture, religion and politics meddle with a society such as modern day Nigeria. Expresses more than the eye reads in detail and complexity as culture enslaves a Nigerian perspective towards every other aspect of life. "Exposes what is yet to said or shown". A must read book.
Rating:
Summary: EXQUISITE DEBUT NOVEL
Review: This is first-rate historical fiction that reads like a memoir. Written in first person narrative by the main character, Kambili Achike, a 15-year-old Nigerian girl, it is a stunningly original debut novel.
Brought up in an extremely privileged household Kambili is brought up by a father who is a religious fanatic, to the point of physically abusing his children and wife when they do not follow the "rules" that he imposes regarding praying, etc. As the children have grown to teens they begin to question many of their father's actions. They are not allowed to visit their grandfather because their father regards him as an "unrelenting pagan" who will poison the children's minds. The narrative is restrained yet luminous and telling.
When political unrest begins to strike close to home, they are finally allowed to visit their Aunty Ifeoma's warm, crowded, somewhat impoverished household. They are transported into another world where the children speak freely; there is laughter, music and talk. Slowly they begin to realize the extent of their imprisoned lives.
The novel is written with sensitivity and originality in wonderful prose. It depicts an unfamiliar culture while describing family values and the universal turmoil of teenagers. I would highly recommend it to book clubs.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent first novel
Review: Those who know Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from her short stories have high expectations of her. "Purple Hibiscus" lives up to expectations. "Purple Hibiscus" is a coming-of-age story set in Nigeria during the Abacha military regime of the mid-1990s, told through the eyes of 15-year-old Kambili Achike. Kambili's father Eugene, a wealthy Igbo businessman and newspaper publisher, is in many ways a heroic figure; he is a pillar of the church, loyal and generous to his employees and home village and one of the few publishers with the courage to stand up to the military government. The same fanatic religious faith that feeds his stern public morality, however, leads him to ostracize his father and physically abuse his wife and children. Kambili, who has lived under her father's hand throughout her life, is a shadow of a person as the novel begins. As the story progresses, she learns independence and self-reliance from her university-professor aunt Ifeoma, her teenage cousin Amaka and the iconoclastic priest Father Amadi. At the same time, the deterioration of the country and her father's increasingly abusive behavior drive the family closer to collapse. "Purple Hibiscus" is a powerful and sophisticated first novel, and comparison between Adichie and Igbo literary giant Chinua Achebe is not out of place. Achebe's novels, though, tend toward the epic, using their characters to tell the story of their country. Adichie has also spoken in this voice, in short stories such as "Half of a Yellow Sun," but "Purple Hibiscus" is a more intimate portrait. Politics sometimes intrudes through scenes of student riots and the persecution of one of Eugene's editors, but most of the political events happen offstage and are seen through their effect on the family. For all the powerful sense of place in "Purple Hibiscus," Kambili's story is one that could happen anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent first novel
Review: Those who know Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from her short stories have high expectations of her. "Purple Hibiscus" lives up to expectations. "Purple Hibiscus" is a coming-of-age story set in Nigeria during the Abacha military regime of the mid-1990s, told through the eyes of 15-year-old Kambili Achike. Kambili's father Eugene, a wealthy Igbo businessman and newspaper publisher, is in many ways a heroic figure; he is a pillar of the church, loyal and generous to his employees and home village and one of the few publishers with the courage to stand up to the military government. The same fanatic religious faith that feeds his stern public morality, however, leads him to ostracize his father and physically abuse his wife and children. Kambili, who has lived under her father's hand throughout her life, is a shadow of a person as the novel begins. As the story progresses, she learns independence and self-reliance from her university-professor aunt Ifeoma, her teenage cousin Amaka and the iconoclastic priest Father Amadi. At the same time, the deterioration of the country and her father's increasingly abusive behavior drive the family closer to collapse. "Purple Hibiscus" is a powerful and sophisticated first novel, and comparison between Adichie and Igbo literary giant Chinua Achebe is not out of place. Achebe's novels, though, tend toward the epic, using their characters to tell the story of their country. Adichie has also spoken in this voice, in short stories such as "Half of a Yellow Sun," but "Purple Hibiscus" is a more intimate portrait. Politics sometimes intrudes through scenes of student riots and the persecution of one of Eugene's editors, but most of the political events happen offstage and are seen through their effect on the family. For all the powerful sense of place in "Purple Hibiscus," Kambili's story is one that could happen anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: An engrossing tale of coming of age
Review: Written by 2003 O. Henry Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (who grew up in Nigeria), Purple Hibiscus is the gripping and literate novel of a privileged Nigerian family. A fifteen-year-old girl and her brother enjoy the trappings of wealth yet suffer under the strictness of their fanatically religious and controlling father. When a military coup threatens to destroy the country, turmoil, sacrifice, and danger promote desperation in this engrossing tale of coming of age. Purple Hibiscus is an enthusiastically recommended addition for all community library fiction collections.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly believable; precise sense of place and character
Review: Young Kambili's father is a presence in his Nigerian community. He is larger than life--a physically big, economically powerful man who raised himself from nothing to preside over factories and the only newspaper in the country brave enough to trumpet the corruption of the latest government. He is a godly man, a man who prays so long before a meal that the food becomes cold, a benefactor whose generosity has made his local Catholic church a thing of beauty and prosperity. He inspires awe in many, and outright worship in more than a few. And so, how can his family--his teenaged daughter, her brother Jaja and her mother--not love him? How can they complain when his fervor to keep them all righteous and spotless in God's eyes tips into rigidity and, ultimately, into violence? Purple Hibiscus explores, through the eyes of its young protagonist, the dicotomy of life with a Great Man who is a dictator to his own family. The situations and the characters are utterly believable; even the scenes that made me flinch were so beautifully written that I could not dismiss the complex glue that held this family together--the economic dependence, the paternalism, the order that flies in the face of the country's chaos, and, yes, the love that can't believe that things will only get worse. This could be a grim tale, but the complexity of the characters, the candor of the narrator and the beautifully precise sense of place raise it above its painful subject matter. The family also serves as a microcosm of the country: in spite of the power games of an inept government, the paranoia, contradictions, and lingering taint of colonialism, the broken promises across the board--be it the diversion of fuel or non-payment of state salaries--in this book Nigeria's citizens, like the family members, only run when they have no choice. And in both cases, they do so with a sense of betrayal, a wounded love. A simply written, complicated book. Susan O'Neill, author, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam
|
