AN UNUSUAL GRIEF

Author: Yewande Omotoso

Publisher: Cassava Republic/Jonathan Ball

Reviewer: Nancy Richards

It is not usual for a child to die before their parent. What is usual, or normal, is always at question – but a mother grieving her daughter, as opposed to a daughter her mother, is the premise of Yewande Omotoso’s book. The author herself knows grief. Lost her mother aged 23. But in the case of her characters, Mojisola, mother, and Yinka, daughter, there had been some long estrangement. And in trying to uncover the mystery of her daughter’s death, and life, Mojisola discovers much about herself. As she stealths about Yinka’s Jo’burg apartment looking for clues, she encounters taciturn landlady Zelda Petersen. The developing relationship between these two older women is, well, unusual. As is the relationship Nigerian-born Moji ‘develops’ with D-Man, the chap with whom Yinka had been communicating on an ‘unusual’ dating site. Without giving too much away (the intrigue is in wondering where we are going with all these discoveries) Yinka’s exploration of a sleazy alternative underworld exposes Moji to the kinds of things, and people, she had not previously experienced. Personally, I was also intrigued by her search for Yinka’s drawings. Again, there is a link with her own, but very different experience of drawing – botanical drawing. On relationships, not to be overlooked, is also the rather lost one Moji has with her husband Titus. This leads to another psychological unburdening.

Looking back, Moji’s relationship with her own mother is not without complications, so, as a writer, the author has had an opportunity to interrogate many secrets and lies as well as matters of the head and heart – ‘emotional code’ it’s referred to as.

Giving a geographical backdrop to the narrative, or narratives, are the locations – Jo’burg, Cape Town but what adds the ‘unusual’ is the distinctive and irresistible Nigerian flavour – the occasional pidgin, the spice, the memories of Ife-Ife. For me this book, like Omotoso’s previous titles, Bom Boy and The Woman Next Door, is written with not just knowledge and care for her characters, but with such original insight. Unusual you might say.