Great African Reads discussion

This is a place to discuss the book "Reading the Ceiling" during and after you have read the novel. If your post contains spoilers, please note that.

So- I have finished Ayodele's first "life" so far. I intend to post after each one to see how my reactions to the book have changed as her life has changed.

I hope at least one of the other lives turns out a little sunnier. Reading so much about Africa lately makes me realize what an American (and by that I mean USA) reader I am. Both in terms of wanting my "happy endings" and in terms of being a borderline lazy reader who wants the details filled in for me.

I had a little bit of a hard time with this book in the sense that many of the episodes of Ayodele's life were mentioned so briefly and I wanted to know more, have more details filled in (hence the lazy reader tag). But at the same time, I marvel at authors who can weave a whole lifetime in so few words.

CONTAINS POTENTIAL SPOILER

As for the sunnier part, I was saddened by the news of Yuan's death and glad to see that the next section is titled "Yuan". But as with Ruben, that doesn't neccessarily mean he will be a main character, as I had assumed before I started reading the book. My main question at this point is whether or not he lives in the alternate stories. If so it makes me think about how much our choices affect not only our own lives, but the lives of those around us.

Hey Lynne, I need to get the book back from the library before I can comment too much, but I agree that the book's style is to leave a lot for the reader to fill in. It requires that one pay attention carefully to details. I reread earlier passages as I went through the book.

I read it over a very short span of time. I agree that one would like to have some developments spelled out a bit more. On the other hand as one goes through the different lives, certain people turn up again and again and their characters are filled in as we go.

I enjoyed the book a lot - so funny at times and I liked Forster's sense of imagery that is so refreshing.

I've closed this thread as we also have a discussion of 'Reading the ceiling' as part of the Tour d'Afrique. For more details, see the discussion thread started in 2011.