Ada’s Room

Otoo (Synchronicity) tracks a woman through many reincarnations and across centuries and continents in her clever if meandering latest. Readers first encounter Ada in 1400s Ghana, where she grieves the loss of her infant. Next, Ada’s a mathematician in 19th-century London, where’s she’s addicted to gambling and carries on an affair with Charles Dickens. During WWII, Ada is sent by the Nazis to a concentration camp and forced to work in a brothel. In each of her lives, Ada receives the same mystical beaded bracelet, which figures each time into her death at the hands of a man (in Victorian England, it’s her wedding bracelet). Before each iteration, an unnamed angellike narrator tries to prevent Ada from meeting a similar fate as the last, reminding her, “all beings—past, present, and future—are connected,” but Ada always forgets. Taken together, the early accounts of Ada feel a bit scattershot, but Otoo hits her stride after introducing the final version of Ada, pregnant and British-Ghanaian in present-day Germany. Here, Otoo gives her character more room to breathe, and the author draws poignant connections to Ada’s past lives. Patient readers will find Otoo has much to say about ownership and belonging. Agent: Markus Hoffman, Regal Hoffman Assoc. (Mar.)