Book : The Girl with the louding voice
Author : Abi Daré
Publisher : Dutton
Published : 4 February, 2020
Blurb
A powerful, emotional debut novel told in the unforgettable voice of a young Nigerian woman who is trapped in a life of servitude but determined to fight for her dreams and choose her own future.
Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice”—the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni’s father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir.
When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. As a yielding daughter, a subservient wife, and a powerless slave, Adunni is told, by words and deeds, that she is nothing.
But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it. And when she realizes that she must stand up not only for herself, but for other girls, for the ones who came before her and were lost, and for the next girls, who will inevitably follow; she finds the resolve to speak, however she can—in a whisper, in song, in broken English—until she is heard.
Review
This is one of the most amazing #ownvoices books I’ve read. It is terrific.
Often an author is so into his/her writing and writes too beautifully for the character in question. The character maybe illiterate but the language of the book is like an elite speaker. In this book, the central character Adunni had studied English only till primary school level so the book is written in incorrect English, grammatically and spelling wise. It was bit jarring in the beginning but you get used to it. By the second half of the book the English begins to improve as she gets more coaching.
The author knows how to hit the right nerves.
Brilliant.
My Rating : 4.5/5 🌟
P. S. I had received a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss. Thank you Dutton books.
