The Furrows
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Average rating3.9
I don't want to tell you what happened; I want to tell you how it felt. Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother Wayne is seven. One day, when they are alone together, there is an accident, and Wayne is lost forever. Though his body is never recovered, their mother is unable to stop searching. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt- How do you grieve an absence? And how does it feel? As C grows older, she relives and retells her story, and she sees her brother everywhere- in coffee shops, subway cars, cities on both sides of America. Here is her brother's older face, the colour of his eyes, his lanky limbs, the way he seems to recognise her too. But it can't be, of course. Or can it? And then one day, there is another accident, and C meets a man both mysterious and familiar, a man who is also searching for someone, as well as his own place in the world. His name is Wayne. Namwali Serpell's piercing new novel captures the ongoing and uncanny experience of grief, as the past breaks over the present, like waves in the sea. The Furrows is a bold and beautiful exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a masterful story of mistaken identity, slippery reality, black experience, and the wishful and sometimes willful longing for reunion with those we've lost.
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I am kind of at a loss at what to say about The Furrows. I definitely like it and think Serpell is a daring, talented writer for pulling off what she did here, but I find myself struggling to put my emotions towards it into coherent sentences. Let's start with a summary. The Furrows starts off with a 12-year-old girl named Cassandra (Cee for short) on the day she sees her 7-year-old brother Wayne die. She returns home and tells her parents what happened but her mother refuses to believe that Wayne is dead. Based on that, you'd think that this is a straightforward tale about grief, but this is very much not that. Through the rest of the first part we see Cee grow up and see Wayne in various people. These appear to be grief-induced hallucinations until she meets a man named Wayne who bears a striking resemblance to her brother. From here on out we see Cee and Wayne develop a relationship and find out that Wayne's past is murky and involves a kid who looked just like him and had his same name. I can't possibly sum up the last part of the book in a way that does Serpell's writing justice. As I said above, this is not a basic story of familial grief. Instead, Serpell injects a lot of life into this tale, making it somewhat of a mystery novel as well as a romantic story. She never loses sight of what is important as it always comes back to the day that Wayne died, but Serpell tells the story in such a way that it feels like an emotional ocean, with big waves of grief surrounding calm periods of levity. This makes the book a really interesting read and I really like the choices Serpell made to continue to surprise the reader throughout. I don't think I quite get everything that this book is trying to say but I do find myself interested in it all the same and that is something that I find very valuable in a novel. Serpell is a genuine talent.
