The Famished Road by Ben Okri

I have to admit that I nearly gave up on the book many times. I had such a hard time getting into it. At first I loved the fact that the book was written by a Nigerian author since I was coming out of two books I had really enjoyed by Achebe, another Nigerian author. And I loved that the main character was Azuro, an abiku child, a spirit child who is born and dead many times from the same parents and always tempted to die again to go back to its spirit world. This was also something that had been present in the previous books from Nigeria I had read, but then there was so much about the visions of the spirits in this world by Azuro, it was described in such details that what others had read and admired as a colourful descriptions of visions came across to me as an easy on going descriptions designed to shock: “monsters” with three heads, red eyes etc etc etc. I found it boring! Sorry, but it was just boring regardless of how imaginative, colourful, different and unexpected the world he described were. They just did not bring me to see anything that I either wanted to see, or wanted to avoid. I was just bored by them. But as I had finally decided to give up the book and admit defeat Azuro descriptions of what happened to him when he nearly died made sense. In this context his descriptions of the spirit world made sense to me. Then the father somehow, and not by some trick of “anything is possible in the spirit world” but by what felt like a genuinely possible set of circumstances, Azuro’s father becomes an important character in the novel and I found myself wanting to find out more about the story. By the time I realized that I was reading the book again I was a hundred page from the end of the book. And I really enjoyed the last third of the book.

Call me simple, but I like books that tell me something, a story, facts that I either wanted to know or did not know I wanted to know, but something else than words written all together to startle and show what can be done with words. The Famished Road, could be the story of an abiku child and his struggle to decide between the spirit world and the world of the people alive. It could be the story of a family with an abiku child and their struggle to keep such a child alive. It could be the story of a poor but proud family during elections in Nigeria resisting the pressure to vote for the party most people seem to support. It could be the story of a father and his son. It could be the story of one poor somewhat isolated Nigerian family and its friendship to two also isolated characters in the community: Madame Koto, the powerful bar keeper who deals in witchcraft, and the Photographer, who endangers his life by taking photos of political rallies. It could be the story of a poor man’s struggle. It could be the story of a blind man who can see part of the spirit world. It could be the story of a young boy who lives part of his life in the spirit world and who is recognized as such by all wizards and witches. It could be the story of a father of a poor family who tries to be stay alive and to remain true to himself. Or it could the simple story of a family in Nigeria. But instead it is all those mixed up together, and because of it I did not enjoy this book as much as the reviewed had lead me to hope I would. I had to wade through too much “stuff” to find parts I wanted to read.

So in the end, would I recommend The Famished Road? Probably not, unless you have a lot of time (it is a long book) and you like reading descriptions of what could be drug induced hallucinations. It is a shame because parts of it, and particularly the last third, were worth the read from my point of view, but again, how much hay do you really want to go through to find the needle?

Having enjoyed the last third so much I thought maybe it was because I was in a different head space, or maybe I was finally getting into the style of the book so I immediately restarted the book from the beginning but once again I couldn’t get into it past the first few pages.
So my verdict stays: too much shaft, not enough wheat!