Review: Harmattan Season

Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is an author I have been rather meh on. I keep trying him, trying to find a good story from him, and he keeps disappointing me. The closest I've come is Riot Baby, which had many things to say about the realities of being black in America, but which didn't quite gel as a story. That is also the problem with this book. I can see what the author is trying to do here, commenting on colonialism and white supremacy, but the worldbuilding is so vague it doesn't hit home like it could.

This is set in an unnamed African country and city colonized by the French. Our protagonist is Boubacar, a down-on-his-luck private eye, who is surprised one night by a woman knocking on his door who has been stabbed (he thinks) and is leaking blood on his carpet. She is followed by the police. Bouba hides her in his closet, and after the police leave he discovers she is gone. He makes up his mind to try to find her and discover what she has gotten herself into. This leads to a bloody trail out of Bouba's own past, and a massacre he was a part of. This story brings him full circle, as he owns up to what he did and attempts to make some sort of atonement for it.

Bouba is a biracial man, with a French father, and is able to pass for white (or "dieman," in this book's vernacular). This plays into the internal struggle he goes through. Revolution is brewing in the city, and Bouba has to decide if he is going to throw in his lot with the rebels. The guilt over his past is a big part of his character arc.

The fantasy element of this story--that there are some natives of this unnamed country who have superhero qualities, i.e. they can "Float" (or fly, rather) like Superman, and the internal organs that allow them to do this can be removed from their bodies and repurposed as bombs--didn't really work for me. It was an awkward kludge over the rest of the story, to say the least. The private-eye-noir part, along with the commentary on colonialism and racism, didn't need this magical-realism poofery. In the end, that dragged the entire story down for me.

Since I've tried this author three times now and not really clicked with his work, I think that's it. Obviously he's finding his audience, but unfortunately, I'm not part of it.

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