The Amputated Memory

The Cameroon-born, Ivory Coast–based Liking (Love Across a Hundred Lives) centers her fifth novel on Halla Njokè, 75, who resolves to honor the women of her Bassa clan and to “convey Africa’s silences” by unearthing her memories. The result is an exhaustive, meandering bildungsroman, interspersed with chantlike songs of life in a fictionalized, strife-torn 20th-century African country recognizable as Cameroon. Largely addressed directly to Halla’s grandiose and philandering father, the first part of the novel recounts her harrowing rural childhood during which her father rapes Halla, attempts to marry her to much older men and fails to provide a promised education. Further, as the struggle for independence plays out in the background, her father collaborates with the white colonial leaders rather than supporting the local resistance. After Halla breaks with her family and moves to the city, she sings at nightclubs and begins to develop as an artist, which leads to a lot of interior monologue. The novel’s last third, full of long summaries rather than dramatized events, thwarts its promising start. (Jan.)