Ratings3
Average rating4
From acclaimed author Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award, The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 award, and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, comes an unforgettable love story about a searing affair between an American woman and an African man in 1970s America and an unflinching novel about the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom. Elegiac, blazing with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives, All Our Names is a marvel of vision and tonal command. Writing within the grand tradition of Naipul, Greene, and Achebe, Mengestu gives us a political novel that is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, of self-determination and the names we are given and the names we earn. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
Reviews with the most likes.
Wow, I have to say that this Knopf hardback might be one of the coolest I've had — everything from design and typesetting to how the paper feels is amazing. (/technical note)
Can't say I loved the content as much though. It's a great story, and the two male protagonists felt interesting and complicated. The Helen character seemed a little flat for the first few chapters, but about halfway through the book she started gaining more depth.
There's something strange about how Mengestu ignores setting. I'm not a fan of long and overly detailed descriptions, but I like to be able to ‘see' where a scene takes place, even if only vaguely. At times it felt like a book about Africa and the Midwest that was written by an author who'd never personally been to either (which of course is not the case here). There's something about Mengestu's style that just isn't quite my thing. I kept wishing for more dialogue as it's something that he does really well, but the book was full of introspections that felt a bit mundane.
This is one of the books that had been sitting in my TBR list for the longest time, I'm glad I finally got to it because it was really good. It's honest, often unflinchingly so. There's no theatrics here so everything feels realistic, and I honestly could not put it down once I started.