Little Family

February 24, 2020
The allure of wealth tests a makeshift family in this vibrant outing from Beah (A Long Way Gone). Eighteen-year-old Khoudiemata acts as a motherly figure for a group of five young people living on the margins of the city of Foloiya in an unnamed African country that will remind readers of Sierra Leone. They spend their days roving through town and stealing essentials to survive. Twenty-year-old Elimane, a member of the family, connects with a rich man they call William Handkerchief, who enlists the “little family” in shady dealings in exchange for payments of hundreds of dollars. Khoudiemata uses her share to hide the reality of her current situation and befriend a group of young wealthy elites in Foloiya, including Frederick Cardew-Boston, scion of a powerfully connected family. Khoudiemata agrees to a weekend away with Frederick and his friends, but Elimane’s concern about her involvement with Frederick leads to devastating consequences. Beah informs his characters’ blend of street savvy and naïveté with bursts of details about the experiences that shaped them in a bustling and crooked society. Fans of African postcolonial fiction are in for a treat. Agent: Flip Brophy.

March 1, 2020
Five grifter children band together, holed up in an abandoned fuselage in Zimbabwe. We meet Beah's protagonists as an unnamed narrator glimpses a boy in a Zimbabwean forest before the boy slips away. The child has heard an elaborate whistle and answered it, the all-clear of four adolescents and one small girl surviving by their wits. Elimane, Khoudiemata, Ndevui, Kpindi, and Namsa have come together to shelter in the remains of a crashed airplane covered with foliage. But these are no boxcar children--each day they fan out to scam and steal their daily portion with a zest that Dickens' Fagin would admire. They sneer at government workers along the road: "The census meant nothing. It was just another ploy that let those in power pretend that something was being done." It's an ingenious setup from the author of A Long Way Gone (2007), a memoir of Beah's harrowing coming-of-age in Sierra Leone as a child soldier. That book created a sensation--though some questioned its accuracy, Beah stands by his story--and his fiction is clearly informed by both his experiences with trauma and as a Los Angeles-based married father of three. When his characters become entangled with a crime syndicate midbook, their deeds grow graver, and the children blot out their fear with ganja and alcohol: "They were upset about not only what they had taken part in, but what it stirred up for them as well." As the rainy season resumes, their old plane leaks more each year. Khoudiemata, perhaps the cleverest in the little family, starts a beach flirtation with a clique of rich young elites, who declare she is "fresh, original, real, and mysteriously unusual in a great way." The awkwardness of that phrase conveys the belabored writing that occasionally detracts from the story. Still, readers will be drawn to discover what befalls a group fending for itself amid conflict and crime. Beah draws on both his life and imagination to depict children leading brave, provisional lives.

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Starred review from March 15, 2020
Beah, who recounted his brutal experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone in his best-selling memoir, A Long Way Gone (2007), understands all too well the horrors that can befall children. Here his fictional "little family" numbers five, the two oldest still teens. Among them, they understand 15 languages and three dialects, but they never speak about their lives before they became family. Even Beah treads lightly, with minium reveals. Bookish Elimane lost everything and everyone to fire; Khoudiemata escaped repeated sexual abuse; young Namsa remains plagued by screaming night terrors. Little is known about the two in-between boys, Nedevui and Kpindi, except a seeming contentment with their rambunctious togetherness. Together, the fivesome lives in an abandoned airplane at the edge of the chaos of a small town, Foloiya, where well-planned hustling and impeccably timed thieving keep the children alive. When Elimane saves a businessman who falls into the harbor, he's rewarded with lucrative opportunities, but the price for cooperation keeps climbing. Meanwhile, a rare hair-salon visit washes away Khoudiemata's invisibility, and suddenly, her beauty draws attention both coveted and feared; she is torn between what she knows and what she wants, and what she chooses will have life-altering consequences. Unflinching and unadorned, Beah's novel provides an indelible portrait of desperate survival.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2020

Beah, the Sierra Leonean boy soldier whose 2007 memoir, A Long Way Gone, seared its way into readers' consciousness, is safely ensconced in the United States. But his heart will always be with the young victims of Africa's civil wars. In his second novel (after Radiance of Tomorrow), five children, wise beyond their years, band together for safety and survival in an abandoned airplane they call home. Led by the bookish Elimane and mothered by scarcely teenaged Khoudiemata, the motley group perfects the art of grifting, carefully planning its forays into the village to snatch food or items for barter. Beah portrays his characters with exquisite tenderness, imbuing them with a grace that belies their wretched situation, while he hints at their pasts through quickly tamped-down memories or nightmares gently dispelled by Khoudie's soothing hands. But Elimane's chance encounter with a mysterious new employer and Khoudie's involvement with a cadre of politically connected young people soon threaten the family's fragilely constructed invisibility. Verdict In a work less harrowing but no less effective than Radiance of Tomorrow, Beah continues to speak eloquently to the impact of colonialism on generations of African children for whom freedom is merely an illusion. [See Prepub Alert, 10/14/19.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2019

Far from the madding world, five young people make a home in an abandoned airplane. They include smart, bookish Elimane, at 17 the group's father figure; clever mother figure Khoudimata, trying to keep everyone safe and fed; plus wily Ndevui, thoughtful Kpindi, and little Namsa. Elimane's association with the mysterious William Handkerchief might keep them safely hidden away forever, but Khoudimata's growing fascination with the "Beautiful People," scions of their country's corrupt and powerful, threatens the entire group. Beah, famed for the No. 1 New York Times best-selling A Long Way Gone, a memoir of his life as a boy soldier in Africa, here follows up his LJ-starred fiction debut, Radiance of Tomorrow.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.