Genre Fiction
![Krystle Zara Appiah - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0BBSPNJKC.jpg)
Rootless: A Novel
A provocative debut novel about a marriage in crisis that asks the question: Can you ever be rooted in a home that's on the brink of collapse?
"Beautiful, gripping, and tender . . . a powerful and unforgettable meditation on love, belonging, and motherhood."-Emilia Hart, author of Weyward
On a Spring afternoon in London, Sam hops the stairs of his flat two at a time. There's £1,300 missing from his and his wife, Efe's, shared bank account and his calls are going straight to voicemail. When he finally reaches someone, he learns Efe is nearly 5,000 miles away as their toddler looks around and asks, "Where's Mummy?"
When Efe and Sam met as teens headed for university, it seemed everyone knew they were meant to be. Efe, newly arrived in the UK from Ghana and sinking under the weight of her parents' expectations, found comfort in the focused and idealistic Sam. He was stable, working toward a law career, and had an unwavering vision for their future. A vision Efe, now a decade later, finds slightly insufferable. From the outside, they're the picture-perfect couple everyone imagined, but there are cracks in the frame.
When Efe and Sam are faced with an unplanned pregnancy, they find themselves on opposing sides. Fatherhood is everything he has dreamed of, but Efe feels stuck in a nightmare. And when a new revelation emerges, they are forced to confront just how radically different they want their lives to be. Already swallowed by the demands of motherhood and feeling the dreams she had slipping away once again, Efe disappears.
Rootless is a heartrending love story about motherhood and sacrifice, providing an intimate look at what happens after a marriage collapses, leading two people to rediscover what they ultimately want-and if it's still each other. As Efe says, "Love and regret aren't mutually exclusive."
"Beautiful, gripping, and tender . . . a powerful and unforgettable meditation on love, belonging, and motherhood."-Emilia Hart, author of Weyward
On a Spring afternoon in London, Sam hops the stairs of his flat two at a time. There's £1,300 missing from his and his wife, Efe's, shared bank account and his calls are going straight to voicemail. When he finally reaches someone, he learns Efe is nearly 5,000 miles away as their toddler looks around and asks, "Where's Mummy?"
When Efe and Sam met as teens headed for university, it seemed everyone knew they were meant to be. Efe, newly arrived in the UK from Ghana and sinking under the weight of her parents' expectations, found comfort in the focused and idealistic Sam. He was stable, working toward a law career, and had an unwavering vision for their future. A vision Efe, now a decade later, finds slightly insufferable. From the outside, they're the picture-perfect couple everyone imagined, but there are cracks in the frame.
When Efe and Sam are faced with an unplanned pregnancy, they find themselves on opposing sides. Fatherhood is everything he has dreamed of, but Efe feels stuck in a nightmare. And when a new revelation emerges, they are forced to confront just how radically different they want their lives to be. Already swallowed by the demands of motherhood and feeling the dreams she had slipping away once again, Efe disappears.
Rootless is a heartrending love story about motherhood and sacrifice, providing an intimate look at what happens after a marriage collapses, leading two people to rediscover what they ultimately want-and if it's still each other. As Efe says, "Love and regret aren't mutually exclusive."
Editorial Reviews
"A beautiful, gripping, and tender novel . . . Efe and Sam felt heartbreakingly real-I was utterly invested in their relationship, from heady teenage courtship to the challenges of parenthood. Vividly set in London and Accra, Rootless is a powerful and unforgettable meditation on love, belonging, and motherhood."-Emilia Hart, author of Weyward
"The unswerving exploration of marriage, parenthood, and identity in Rootless is brave, insightful, and heartbreaking. . . . A moving debut novel."-Rachel Edwards, author of Lucky
"This exploration of love, loss, and motherhood is tender, powerful, and almost unbearably moving."-Louise O'Neill, author of Idol
"Rootless is a deeply felt novel about the making, unmaking, and remaking of self, family, and home. Krystle Zara Appiah writes with tenderness and grace of her characters' attempts at being seen and loved for who they are rather than who others may wish them to be. Full of romance as well as terrible grief, Rootless enthralled me from the start."-Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother's Lovers
"Rootless lays bare the pain of motherhood in ways we rarely allow ourselves to face. Efe's tragic story will stay with readers long after they finish turning pages, as Appiah makes us think about motherhood, womanhood, and marriage in ways we don't often discuss."-Donna Freitas, author of The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano
"Wow, wow, wow! My jaw is on the floor and my heart is in my throat. Rootless is a beautiful, emotional rollercoaster. I want everyone to read it."-Lizzie Damilola Blackburn, author of Yinka, Where is Your Huzband?
"An expansive and rich saga of a British Ghanaian woman balancing familial expectations with her own desires . . . This cosmopolitan work will speak to readers."-Publishers Weekly
"The unswerving exploration of marriage, parenthood, and identity in Rootless is brave, insightful, and heartbreaking. . . . A moving debut novel."-Rachel Edwards, author of Lucky
"This exploration of love, loss, and motherhood is tender, powerful, and almost unbearably moving."-Louise O'Neill, author of Idol
"Rootless is a deeply felt novel about the making, unmaking, and remaking of self, family, and home. Krystle Zara Appiah writes with tenderness and grace of her characters' attempts at being seen and loved for who they are rather than who others may wish them to be. Full of romance as well as terrible grief, Rootless enthralled me from the start."-Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother's Lovers
"Rootless lays bare the pain of motherhood in ways we rarely allow ourselves to face. Efe's tragic story will stay with readers long after they finish turning pages, as Appiah makes us think about motherhood, womanhood, and marriage in ways we don't often discuss."-Donna Freitas, author of The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano
"Wow, wow, wow! My jaw is on the floor and my heart is in my throat. Rootless is a beautiful, emotional rollercoaster. I want everyone to read it."-Lizzie Damilola Blackburn, author of Yinka, Where is Your Huzband?
"An expansive and rich saga of a British Ghanaian woman balancing familial expectations with her own desires . . . This cosmopolitan work will speak to readers."-Publishers Weekly
Readers Top Reviews
J. Sunday
Finding one’s true love in life can bring about great comfort and pure bliss at times. It can also elicit deep sadness. Maame is the queen. She wants the best for her daughter, Efe, with a good education, job, husband and children. She is direct and manipulative at times. Paa tells her to find happiness. Her sister, Serwaa, is her best friend. Her husband, Sam, is her sweet soul mate. The story starts “five months before” and then skips back 19 years to give the reader a glimpse which leads up to the last part. Each is well-paced with a little bit more each time to develop the characters. All along the reader just gets more engaged in what’s happening between the couple. The beauty of this book is being able to easily picture the places and people. Efe’s family resides in Ghana but she lives with Sam where they went to the university in London. She works at a gallery; he’s a lawyer. They have solid careers and then things change when their daughter, Liv, is born. I want to tell you that life is perfect for Efe and Sam. But I can’t. There are problems and some are difficult as it relates to the decisions that are made. It’s the part where you wish you could be there to help them. There are just a handful of characters to keep an eye on with easy-to-remember names. The author tells just enough to make this a page turner with some surprises that I didn’t expect. She has a way of capturing one’s emotions with a dramatic ending.
Sacha
5 stars "Speechless" feels more accurate. This is an exceptional debut and easily one of the most moving and memorable novels I've read in a long, LONG time. Efe and Sam meet each other early on, and their story starts in the recent past and jumps back nearly 20 years to their early encounters. Readers have the incredible privilege of knowing these two - their secrets, their desires, their truths - in ways that even they are not aware of until much later. As their relationship evolves, they grow together in some ways and very far apart in others, and the entire journey is indelible. I like to know as little as possible about a book before I pick it up, and that worked well for me here. I'm glad I had no idea what to expect beyond whatever trials and tribulations of a marriage I might guess at, at best. I recommend these elements of surprise for prospective readers, too. Go on the journey *with* them. There are aspects of Efe's character that are so relatable to me that I couldn't help but root for her, but that didn't stop me for also rooting for Sam, and that's a mark of both great character development and brilliant plotting. How can one be on both sides of a situation like this? Read and learn. While Efe and Sam's relationship is at the center, what makes this novel even more special is the way in which the secondary characters are woven through the years and various stages. Friends, acquaintances, mothers, fathers, sisters...everyone brings new texture to these characters' experiences. I can't say enough about this novel. It's incisive, honest, painful, beautiful, shocking, comfortable, and moving all at once. In case this isn't clear, I loved this, recommend it highly, and commit to keeping my eyes _Clockwork Orange_-style peeled and open for whatever Appiah produces next. This is a gift.
Louise Foerster
ROOTLESS by Krystle Zara Appiah is the story of a woman searching for her dreams in a life and marriage gone off the rails. From the moment Sam returns home to discover his wife Efe is gone, their child alone, and money missing from their bank account, the story flows between past homeland, present life, heartfelt dreams, and the question of what happens when your happily ever after is not the life you have landed in. At one point, Efe observes “Love and regret aren’t mutually exclusive" and that pithy summary infuses the entire story with heartfelt moments, deep questions, and the unclear future yet to be created. The people, settings, and events were absorbing and kept me reading way too late at night. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.
Short Excerpt Teaser
May 2016
Five Months Before
Sam knows he is too late even as he sprints back from the station. He runs the whole way, phone clenched in his fist, the early afternoon sun at his back. His lungs are seizing in his chest by the time he crashes into the stairwell. He takes the stairs two at a time and, panting loudly, calls Efe's name as he staggers into the flat. Nothing is out of place. Maybe he's overreacting. She has to be here somewhere, he thinks as he moves from room to room, peers around corners, behind the bathroom door. He throws open the utility closet and stares at the hoover and dust-covered pots of paint. The last room he checks is their bedroom. The door sits open and ominous at the end of the hall. Here he finds gaps everywhere: bare hangers, three pairs of shoes gone, a drawer cracked open as if she'd left in a hurry, her favorite necklace glinting on the dresser.
Sam doubles over. Suddenly the air is warm and sludgy. The room swims. He feels like a small child waking up groggy and alone in a ghost-filled house. He checks his phone again, scans through the stream of messages he's fired out, but there's still no reply from Efe. All his calls go to voicemail. The £1,300 payment to British Airways is still pending. Then he thinks of Olivia and panic floods his system anew. He fumbles with his mobile, calls the babysitter, and mutters "Pick up, pick up, pick up" until she does.
"Hello."
"Is Olivia there?" Sam says.
"Of course. Is everything o-?"
"Let me speak to her," he interrupts. There's a brief scuffling sound as the phone changes hands; then Sam hears Liv on the line. His legs soften as he listens to the toddler sway to her words, the soft p sounds and the wobbly t's. He sinks to the floor. Unaware, Liv chats happily about Bear-Bear, seamlessly picking up their conversation from hours earlier. Sam lets his eyes close and smiles. "See you soon. I love you. Be a good girl," he says, then adds, "I'm coming to pick you up, okay? Put Miss Bea back on the phone." After the call, Sam lowers his face into his hands. He waits for the ringing in his ears to stop and the flecks of dancing light to scatter; then he summons up all the energy he has, to face the aftermath.
Later, when Sam returns to the flat with Liv, he holds his breath as she pauses in the hallway, looks both ways, first into the living room, then into the kitchen. Even in her absence, Efe is everywhere. Olivia gives him a curious look. "Where's Mummy?" she asks.
"Out. She'll be back soon," Sam says. He too believes these words. No need to worry Liv. No matter what happens between him and Efe, they always find their way back to each other. He just needs to give her time. All he has to do is wait.
Sam settles Liv in the living room, glances at the clock and sees it's early, not quite three. "Want some juice?" he asks and returns with juice and buttered crackers.
In the quiet of the kitchen he listens to the voicemail again. It was hard to make out at first because of the cars hurtling past in the background. Sam had listened to it three times, struggling to make sense of the words, before he'd finally understood that she'd gone. She'd told no one, only called her sister minutes before she'd boarded the plane, and her sister had called him. After the beep there's a three-second pause before Serwaa realizes it's recording and speaks. "Hey, Sam, it's me," she says. "Can you let Efe know I got her message? Her phone's going to voicemail, so if you're with her, just tell her it's fine. I'll be there when she lands. I hope things are good."
All afternoon Sam makes phone calls. Most are to Efe, even though he knows she's somewhere high above Europe or the Sahara, more miles threading between them with each passing second. He calls Serwaa too. His movements are mechanical. He hangs up, waits a few minutes, and redials. He doesn't let himself think or stop.
"Daddy?" Sam turns to find Olivia standing in the doorway. She looks at him warily, his brave and curious four-year-old, and Sam's sure she can tell something is off. He takes a deep breath and fills his voice with false cheer.
"Need something?"
"I'm hungry," Liv says, a half second before her stomach rumbles.
"Oh." Sam's eyes move to the clock. Hours have passed. Outside the sky is a dim gray. "Let's get you some dinner," Sam says and digs around in the fridge. He finds rice but no stew, pulls out a bag of fish sticks and frozen peas iced to the back of the freezer but can't find fries. In the end, he feeds Liv cheese on toast and nudges her back in the direction of the TV.
Just before ten the shrill sound of the buzzer pierces the flat. Sam lowers Liv into her bed, still dressed...
Five Months Before
Sam knows he is too late even as he sprints back from the station. He runs the whole way, phone clenched in his fist, the early afternoon sun at his back. His lungs are seizing in his chest by the time he crashes into the stairwell. He takes the stairs two at a time and, panting loudly, calls Efe's name as he staggers into the flat. Nothing is out of place. Maybe he's overreacting. She has to be here somewhere, he thinks as he moves from room to room, peers around corners, behind the bathroom door. He throws open the utility closet and stares at the hoover and dust-covered pots of paint. The last room he checks is their bedroom. The door sits open and ominous at the end of the hall. Here he finds gaps everywhere: bare hangers, three pairs of shoes gone, a drawer cracked open as if she'd left in a hurry, her favorite necklace glinting on the dresser.
Sam doubles over. Suddenly the air is warm and sludgy. The room swims. He feels like a small child waking up groggy and alone in a ghost-filled house. He checks his phone again, scans through the stream of messages he's fired out, but there's still no reply from Efe. All his calls go to voicemail. The £1,300 payment to British Airways is still pending. Then he thinks of Olivia and panic floods his system anew. He fumbles with his mobile, calls the babysitter, and mutters "Pick up, pick up, pick up" until she does.
"Hello."
"Is Olivia there?" Sam says.
"Of course. Is everything o-?"
"Let me speak to her," he interrupts. There's a brief scuffling sound as the phone changes hands; then Sam hears Liv on the line. His legs soften as he listens to the toddler sway to her words, the soft p sounds and the wobbly t's. He sinks to the floor. Unaware, Liv chats happily about Bear-Bear, seamlessly picking up their conversation from hours earlier. Sam lets his eyes close and smiles. "See you soon. I love you. Be a good girl," he says, then adds, "I'm coming to pick you up, okay? Put Miss Bea back on the phone." After the call, Sam lowers his face into his hands. He waits for the ringing in his ears to stop and the flecks of dancing light to scatter; then he summons up all the energy he has, to face the aftermath.
Later, when Sam returns to the flat with Liv, he holds his breath as she pauses in the hallway, looks both ways, first into the living room, then into the kitchen. Even in her absence, Efe is everywhere. Olivia gives him a curious look. "Where's Mummy?" she asks.
"Out. She'll be back soon," Sam says. He too believes these words. No need to worry Liv. No matter what happens between him and Efe, they always find their way back to each other. He just needs to give her time. All he has to do is wait.
Sam settles Liv in the living room, glances at the clock and sees it's early, not quite three. "Want some juice?" he asks and returns with juice and buttered crackers.
In the quiet of the kitchen he listens to the voicemail again. It was hard to make out at first because of the cars hurtling past in the background. Sam had listened to it three times, struggling to make sense of the words, before he'd finally understood that she'd gone. She'd told no one, only called her sister minutes before she'd boarded the plane, and her sister had called him. After the beep there's a three-second pause before Serwaa realizes it's recording and speaks. "Hey, Sam, it's me," she says. "Can you let Efe know I got her message? Her phone's going to voicemail, so if you're with her, just tell her it's fine. I'll be there when she lands. I hope things are good."
All afternoon Sam makes phone calls. Most are to Efe, even though he knows she's somewhere high above Europe or the Sahara, more miles threading between them with each passing second. He calls Serwaa too. His movements are mechanical. He hangs up, waits a few minutes, and redials. He doesn't let himself think or stop.
"Daddy?" Sam turns to find Olivia standing in the doorway. She looks at him warily, his brave and curious four-year-old, and Sam's sure she can tell something is off. He takes a deep breath and fills his voice with false cheer.
"Need something?"
"I'm hungry," Liv says, a half second before her stomach rumbles.
"Oh." Sam's eyes move to the clock. Hours have passed. Outside the sky is a dim gray. "Let's get you some dinner," Sam says and digs around in the fridge. He finds rice but no stew, pulls out a bag of fish sticks and frozen peas iced to the back of the freezer but can't find fries. In the end, he feeds Liv cheese on toast and nudges her back in the direction of the TV.
Just before ten the shrill sound of the buzzer pierces the flat. Sam lowers Liv into her bed, still dressed...
