![]() ![]() What follows in each story takes the breath away, for Okojie’s momentum never loses pace. It’s a cry that echoes Greek tragedies and epic poems in its strength. Every word I say to you is true.įuck everything that tells you if you’re good you’ll be valued. Right from the start, in “Gunk,” she declares herself to the reader with a mother’s words of warning and wisdom to her son, less a loving talk than a war-like acceptance of the world’s evils and the necessity to meet them head-on, as if spoken by a goddess:ĭon’t make me transform. The result shocks, for Okojie doesn’t even bother with lulling the reader into a sense of false security, or feeding them a run-of-the-mill story that ends badly. ![]() ![]() Those in Irenosen Okojie’s Speak Gigantular should, if there is any literary justice, place her in a circle with writers like Shirley Jackson, Margaret Atwood, and Angela Carter, for her tales here weave together the grand aspects of myths and fairy tales with the dark but all-too-real depths of human nature. It is rare to come across a new book where the story or stories told are familiar, but cast in an genuinely uneasy light-one that unsettles while managing to be completely plausible, too close to the emotional truth to be dismissed as total fiction. ![]()
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