Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi
Gyasi’s second novel is an intricate mix of science and religion as the protagonist, Gifty, deals with her ailing Christian mother, who does not believe in mental illness, and her work as a genetic researcher, through which she wants to cure addiction. With flashbacks to growing up extremely religious as first-generation immigrants to Alabama, her father leaving the family to go back to Ghana, and her brother dying of an overdose, Gyasi skillfully shows how the past can overshadow the future – forever – if we let it, and what the present can eventually look like it we don’t. As with her first novel, I enjoyed inhabiting the world Gyasi built and seeing things through her, or rather, her protagonist’s eyes, even if the ending was a little too perfectly cleaned up for my liking, especially compared with Homegoing, if memory serves.
Then Again, Diane Keaton
In the wake of Diane Keaton’s recent passing, I decided to (finally) read her memoir, Then Again, which I have had on my shelf for probably a decade. Written not only as an ode to her mother, Keaton describes the book as a co-memoir as well, one in which she describes her mother’s untapped creative potential and how it affected her own life, leading her to became a world-renowned actor, as well as a dabbler in other artistic areas. She begins with her mother’s childhood and then her own, always intertwining their lives in an indirect comparison in which Keaton reflects on how her mother’s life could have, or would have, been different had she been born in a different era, such as Keaton’s own. She also talks about her journey into motherhood and how it changed how she saw her mother and their relationship. The only stain on this memoir is Keaton’s close relationship with Woody Allen and her continuous mention of it—there was hardly a chapter without his name in it. But overall, I recommend Then Again because it gives readers a well-rounded, fully formed picture of someone who is best remembered for her roles in films such as Annie Hall and The Godfather, but who was clearly so much more than that.