In this Pen Hemingway-winning novel by NoViolet Bulawayo, 10-year-old Darling and her friends live in a small village made up of shacks lived in by families who were forcibly ejected from their homes by developers with bulldozers who razed their houses to the ground. The children make frequent treks to nearby affluent neighborhoods, taking fruit from the trees in front of the homes in order to ward off hunger. They make up games to keep themselves occupied and witness some terrible things, sharing the stories from a child's perspective. Eventually, Darling is sent to live with her aunt and her aunt's family in Detroit and she needs to learn new adaptive skills to survive in this place that has plenty of food, but is strange and filled with other challenges. The story contains heavy, heartrending events told with innocent playfulness from a child's, and then teenager's, perspective. I was completely engaged by the language, which pulls the reader in and brings t...
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits... Abstruser musings ~Samuel Coleridge