Ghana Must Go

Starred review from January 7, 2013
Selasi’s gorgeous debut is a thoughtful look at how the sacrifices we make for our family can be its very undoing. After arriving in America from Ghana, a promising but penniless young man, Kweku Sai, becomes a famed surgeon living in Boston with his wife, Fola, and children, proof of the American dream. Years later, now 57 and married to another woman, Kweku, back in Ghana, is dying in the garden of his home in Accra. After his death, Fola and their four grown children gather in Ghana for the funeral of the man who abandoned them 16 years ago. This emotional reunion reveals to what extent Kweku fractured his beloved family by leaving them. The twins, Taiwo and Kehinde, once inseparable, have not spoken in 18 months; wounded by something neither will disclose, their bond has been eroded by anguish. Olu, the eldest, emulates his father in business but wants his marriage to be “something better than” the family he knows. And the youngest, Sadie, feels inadequate in the shadow of her successful siblings. Reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri but with even greater warmth and vibrancy, Selasi’s novel, driven by her eloquent prose, tells the powerful story of a family discovering that what once held them together could make them whole again. Agent: The Wylie Agency.

January 1, 2013
The bonds of love, loss and misunderstanding connecting an African family are exhaustively dissected in a convoluted first novel. The death of Kweku Sai, a noted surgeon, in the garden of his home in Accra, Ghana, on page one is followed by an impressionistic account of his life--glimpses of childhood and parenthood, moments of shame and bad decisions, regrets, ironies and final thoughts. One central event was the breakup of Kweku's marriage to Fola and separation from his four children: Olu, twins Taiwo and Kehinde and youngest Sadie. The remainder of the book follows the impact of the patriarch's death on this group, which assembles for the funeral. Olu, now half of a Boston-based "golden couple," doesn't believe in family. Taiwo is still in therapy after her high-profile student affair with the dean of law. Artist Kehinde, hiding in Brooklyn, yearns shamefully for his sister. And anxious Sadie is bulimic and withdrawn. This complicated cast is matched by Selasi's taste for fragmented, overloaded sentences: "That still farther, past 'free, ' there lay 'loved, ' in her laughter, lay 'home' in her touch, in the soft of her Afro?" More secrets, wounds and identity crises are rehashed in Africa, until the scattering of the ashes restores some unity. Introverted, clotted, short of narrative drive and, above all, unconvincing, this sensitive but obsessive family anatomization will test the patience of many readers.

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October 15, 2012

After the death of famed surgeon Kwaku Sai, his family, which had spun apart violently when he abandoned them for his second wife, come together again in Ghana. Here they must reconcile themselves to his death even as they reassess what he cost them in life. This debut novel follows the appearance of Selasi's "The Sex Lives of African Girls" in Best American Short Stories 2012 this fall, so watch carefully.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2013
A father's death leads to a new beginning for his fractured family in this powerful first novel. Kweku Sai is felled by a sudden heart attack at his home in Ghana. At the moment of his death, Kweku is filled with regret for his abandonment of his first wife, Fola, and their four children in Baltimore, many years ago, after losing his job as a surgeon. His four children are now scattered across the East Coast: Olu, a gifted surgeon who followed in his father's footsteps; twins Taiwo and Kehinde, who share a terrible secret from childhood; and youngest daughter Sadie, who is struggling with her body image and sexuality. In the wake of their father's death, the four siblings, along with Olu's wife, Ling, reunite to journey to their mother's home in Ghana, where secrets, resentments, and grief bubble to the surface. A finely crafted yarn that seamlessly weaves the past and present, Selasi's moving debut expertly limns the way the bonds of family endure even when they are tested and strained.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)