Purple Hibiscus

This was another find from one of my neighborhood lending libraries, and I delayed on starting it for the silliest reason: I loved Americanah so much, how could Ngozi Adichie's skill from two novels before that be comparable? Like I said, silly. Calling things “coming-of-age” stories tends to flatten them a bit, and that's only the starting point here: this is a coming-of-age story that is also about all kinds of violence: domestic, religious, political/governmental, colonialist. The character studies are beautiful, Ngozi Adichie has apparently always been tremendously skilled at visual imagery, and the complex emotions ring true. My one complaint, which may actually reflect that this was her first novel, is that the denouement is paced differently than the rest of the novel, in a way that feels a little off-kilter. Still, such a great book.