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sturgeonslawyerHugo Novel Nominee #2
This book has a delightfully odd structure, with three types of chapter ... or maybe four.
The protagonist of what appears to be the man story is Zelungo "Zelu" Onyenezi-Oyedele, a woman born in America of Nigerian parents -- an Igbo father and a Yoruban mother. There is a slight tension from the fact that mother is a princess and the Igbo proudly have no kings.
When she was a fairly young child, Zelu climbed a tree in the back yard that proved to be rotten from the inside due to borer beetles; she fell and broke her spine, paralyzing her from the waist down. She has therefore been protected most of her life by her parents and four siblings.
When we first meet her, however, she is teaching a workshop in writing at a Chicago college. This chapter is the only one told by Zelu in first person; it is also the first of many titled "Interview:," giving a variety of perspectives of Zelu and her story as told by numerous other characters.
Shortly after, we encounter her in the Bahamas, at the wedding of one of her sisters. Three fateful things occur here: She gets a phone call from her supervisor at the college informing her that she has been fired; she gets another from her agent informing her that her novel has been rejected for the nth time; and she meets Msizi, who will wind up being her life partner.
But not yet.
In a fit of depression, Zelu, who has never cared for "sci-fi," begins writing a novel called Rusted Robots, a story about a robot named Ankara in a post-apocalyptic scenario where humanity has wiped itself off the face of the Earth, leaving robots to try to mend the mess we have made.
Over a period of a couple of years, she finishes Rusted Robots and gives it to her agent, who enthuses wildly and gives it to publishers for a bidding auction, resulting in a three-book, high-seven-figure contract.
She is contacted by Hugo, a scientist at MIT, who lost both is legs in an accident and has built himself a set of amazing prosthetics and has now designed exoskeletal prostheses for paraplegics. Would she like to be a test subject?
She would.
Her family thinks she's crazy.
She goes, and they work wonderfully.
And ... that's enough summary. It's very light summary of what's gone so far, and not very far into the book. But I must say what the chapter types, other than "Interview," are. The second type, not surprisingly, are third-person narrative of Zelu's story.
The third chapter type, is chapters of Rusted Robots -- which proves to be quite a fascinating story in itself, and reflects back in multiple ways on Zelu's life (as one would expect).
Then there's the last chapter. This is a huge spoiler, not for plot but for theme: so don't read the next paragraph if you don't want to know.
The last chapter is -- like all the Rusted Robots chapters -- told from the point of view of Ankara; and it suggests that he made up Zelu's story, at a specific point in his own story, for a particular reason, and that it became, for lack of a better term, the equivalent of a best-seller among the robots of his time. And the last line of the chapter states clearly a theme which resonates through the book: "creation flows both ways."
Five out of five people who love you so much you can't breathe.
This book has a delightfully odd structure, with three types of chapter ... or maybe four.
The protagonist of what appears to be the man story is Zelungo "Zelu" Onyenezi-Oyedele, a woman born in America of Nigerian parents -- an Igbo father and a Yoruban mother. There is a slight tension from the fact that mother is a princess and the Igbo proudly have no kings.
When she was a fairly young child, Zelu climbed a tree in the back yard that proved to be rotten from the inside due to borer beetles; she fell and broke her spine, paralyzing her from the waist down. She has therefore been protected most of her life by her parents and four siblings.
When we first meet her, however, she is teaching a workshop in writing at a Chicago college. This chapter is the only one told by Zelu in first person; it is also the first of many titled "Interview:
Shortly after, we encounter her in the Bahamas, at the wedding of one of her sisters. Three fateful things occur here: She gets a phone call from her supervisor at the college informing her that she has been fired; she gets another from her agent informing her that her novel has been rejected for the nth time; and she meets Msizi, who will wind up being her life partner.
But not yet.
In a fit of depression, Zelu, who has never cared for "sci-fi," begins writing a novel called Rusted Robots, a story about a robot named Ankara in a post-apocalyptic scenario where humanity has wiped itself off the face of the Earth, leaving robots to try to mend the mess we have made.
Over a period of a couple of years, she finishes Rusted Robots and gives it to her agent, who enthuses wildly and gives it to publishers for a bidding auction, resulting in a three-book, high-seven-figure contract.
She is contacted by Hugo, a scientist at MIT, who lost both is legs in an accident and has built himself a set of amazing prosthetics and has now designed exoskeletal prostheses for paraplegics. Would she like to be a test subject?
She would.
Her family thinks she's crazy.
She goes, and they work wonderfully.
And ... that's enough summary. It's very light summary of what's gone so far, and not very far into the book. But I must say what the chapter types, other than "Interview," are. The second type, not surprisingly, are third-person narrative of Zelu's story.
The third chapter type, is chapters of Rusted Robots -- which proves to be quite a fascinating story in itself, and reflects back in multiple ways on Zelu's life (as one would expect).
Then there's the last chapter. This is a huge spoiler, not for plot but for theme: so don't read the next paragraph if you don't want to know.
The last chapter is -- like all the Rusted Robots chapters -- told from the point of view of Ankara; and it suggests that he made up Zelu's story, at a specific point in his own story, for a particular reason, and that it became, for lack of a better term, the equivalent of a best-seller among the robots of his time. And the last line of the chapter states clearly a theme which resonates through the book: "creation flows both ways."
Five out of five people who love you so much you can't breathe.
