“When faced with a thing that is fragile & perfect in a world that is ugly & crushing & cruel the correct course of action is: Give it no name.”
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 318
Published: 5 March, 2013
Rate: 3 ⭐⭐⭐
Goodreads Synopsis
Meet the Sais, a Nigerian-Ghanaian family living in the United States. A family prospering until the day father and surgeon Kweku Sai is victim of a grave injustice. Ashamed, he abandons his beautiful wife Fola and their little boys and girls, causing the family to fracture and spiral out into the world – New York, London, West Africa, New England – on uncertain, troubled journeys until, many years later, tragedy unites them. Now this broken family has a chance to heal – but can the Sais take it?
My Take
Ghana Must Go was a major miss for me. The first part of the book had me so confused and for a moment there I contemplated giving up and DNFing it.
What I didn’t like was the many digressions. Each character had their own story and I feel like they didn’t merge well and the flow wasn’t there. This led to forgetting a lot of the plot lines. The characters were easily forgettable too.
Ghana Must Go touches on race, gender, class, ambition and social status. It was interesting to see each character’s take on the subject(s). Taiye’s prose is beautifully written and the language is engaging. I liked that. But other than that, there’s nothing much I can say about it.
“If you love someone you show them.”
I feel like this is a book that you either like it or you don’t. I didn’t enjoy it as much, it just didn’t hook me.
Have you read Ghana Must Go? What are your thoughts?
02/09/2019 at 11:19 am
Such a generous rating judging by the review.
03/09/2019 at 2:34 pm
I feel like that’s what it deserves. Its one of those books I didn’t like but wouldn’t tell others not to read it.
06/09/2019 at 10:44 am
I also found this book very hard to keep up with and almost gave up at some point. Yet somehow, I felt like I needed to appreciate it more – like it was my fault that I was not following the story. The language is beautiful but I don’t think it worked well in the book. I kept thinking I was reading a long complicated poem! I would give it 2 stars for effort.
09/09/2019 at 1:06 pm
I feel the same way! I gave it 3 because of the language and prose. I highly favour that in books and it was well done. It just didn’t flow and mesh up well.