The Memory of Love

Gosh, what a wonderful book this is. To try to précis the story has been done in some of these reviews so I will limit myself to saying the world this book brings to life, and the characters so real as I lived with them and learned about their lives will stay with me for a long time. It is sometimes a difficult and eye opening read, trawling up deep feelings, but this is a beautifully written book to take time over and savour.

I have a confession to make. I don’t read enough novels by women. I also read very little African literature. I’ve decided to remedy that this year by reading more novels by women and more novels by African writers. I had heard of Aminatta Forna before but I found this book almost by accident, on a list of African female writers. Based on this novel alone, you ought to be able to find Aminatta Forna’s name on a list of great novelists, full stop. The novel begins by following two sets of events thirty years apart. In 1969 we have Elias Cole, a junior lecturer at the university in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He has just had a paper rejected by the Dean; a serious blow because he is desperately trying to get a tenured post in his department. He befriends a popular extrovert colleague, Julius, but becomes madly jealous of him and increasingly obsessed with his beautiful wife, Saffia. At first she welcomes him as her husband’s friend but becomes uncomfortable around him when she realises he is besotted with her. Switch to 1999 where we have English clinical psychologist, Adrian Lockheart, who has left his wife and daughter to work for a few months in a hospital in Freetown. He befriends a local surgeon, Kai, but struggles to find any patients even though the whole country is suffering from terrible PTSD following a brutal civil war earlier in the 90s. One patient he does find is a dying Elias Cole, who seems to have a lot on his chest, including some dreadful terminal lung disease. In his sessions with Elias Cole Adrian pieces together a series of events that culminated in the arrest of Julius and some other academics on the night of the first moon landing in July 1969. Elias himself was arrested soon after, but whereas Julius died in custody, Elias was released and went on to have a moderately successful academic career. Why? I don’t want to give away too much about the plot. Suffice to say that Adrian’s investigations into what happened when Julius was arrested mingle with events thirty years later when he (Adrian) is allowed to work with patients at the local psychiatric hospital, patients who have been traumatised by the civil war. While Adrian gets deeper into the history and the national “mental ill-health” of Sierra Leone, Kai is desperate to get away from it. His best friend has already emigrated to the USA and Kai is planning to join him, taking his much-needed talents as a surgeon with him. When we discover what he went through in the civil war, we can hardly blame him. There is much to admire about the quality of the writing. The acknowledgements make it clear that the author has done her homework on clinical psychology and surgery, but the writing really comes alive when she moves from descriptions of bone setting to creating a complex picture of Sierra Leone and what happened to the country and its people in that period from the...

Exact opposite of a page turner, more like a think piece... almost devotional in nature. Three men, three stories woven together, a woman of interest, and some wisdom about the psychological mess we call life and love. It took me a very long time to get through this and every time I wanted to call it quits, it would give me just a little more hope that it would finally pick up. It didn’t. I’d say it was underwhelming but not completely considering how many nuggets of wisdom it shared. Not obviously though. You certainly had to hunt for it. All this being said, it felt like a useful read and I’m happy I stuck through it.

After reading Happiness - also by Aminatta Forna - I was eager to read more by this talented and unique author. I say unique because she brings a rare and authentic dual perspective to her characters and stories, drawn from her personal background of being both Sierra Leonean and Scottish, with experience living in both countries. The Memory of Love is a haunting and heartbreaking story of how love, friendships, and family try to survive during and after war. The book has prominent themes of secrets hidden and/or suppressed, shame and regret, fear and loss. I never go for dark books & often abandon them even if they're well-written (e.g. A Little Life. I couldn't do it!) , but for some reason I stuck with this one it because I found it beautiful, compelling and intriguing. Ms. Forna creates a vivid world for her readers with many characters and precise details of scenes that place the reader solidly in the world of the story. I loved this book and although it was a tough read (emotionally), I'm richer for having read it. That being said, I was relieved when it ended on a fairly hopeful note.

Aninta Forna’s book MEMORY OF LOVE is a memoir for the survivors of the civil war in Sierra Leone. I lived in Freetown during the aftermath of the carnage and pillage at the hands of Charles Taylor and the Sierra Leone military who turned against the population. The description of the hospital is true to life. The No Fly Zone at the operating room brought the only smile to my face. The horror of the over filled buses that overturned and killed or injured many people. I felt as those Aminta was reading my diary of the times. The psychiatrist and the psychiatric patients chained to the wall as though they were murderers. What was left out was they did not have an individual room but were actually crowded together. The sweat on their bodies dropping on cement floors. The horrendous body body odors one would note immediately. The book was beautifully written. I appreciated the flash back from the 1960’s. The characters were well developed. The lassa fever doctor who didn’t leave the country but stayed behind to care for the sick and injured. So many honorable people lived through hell . Some survived and others didn't. The river that the character would cross by the bridge mentioned was red from the blood spilled of the innocent. My congratulations to a writer who writes a history of the county during the best and worse of times. It aroused such emotions inside me. I did not read the book as other who reviewed the book. I expect a myth. The author