This book is going to be on Best of 2020 lists everywhere soon. It is that good. I loved Yaa Gyasi's debut, "Homegoing" and like many did a happy dance when I saw that her sophomore effort was set to grace us this fall. Leave your expectations at the door, this is not even remotely like "Homegoing" and shouldn't be judged against it. This book is everything I hoped it would be and then some.

I usually write a short plot summary for the books I review, but for this one I am not sure I should. Going in to this book with little background was a good thing for me. I had no expectations and was fully immersed as a result. What I will say is this is about science & faith, family & identity, sorrow & grief. It is a character study, but there is a solid plot for those that prefer plot driven novels.

My advice is to block off an afternoon (or the day) and just sink deep into this beautiful book and all the feelings that come along with it.

Thank you to Yaa Gyasi, Netgalley, and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

September 1 is going to be a huge pub date, I can feel it. I've been waiting for this latest by Yaa Gyasi since I closed the covers of her last book and this title was, unbelievably, even better than I could have hoped. What an achievement.

Absolutely loved this book! Cannot wait for everyone to experience it. Honnestly, I could go on and on about this book. I went in expecting to be underwhelmed or comparing this to Homegoing but I was SHOOK at how Gyasi took a total 180 and brought us something fresh, excellent and real.

If you are looking for your next favourite book- THIS IS IT!!!

Yaa Gyasi has outdone herself with this gorgeous novel that focuses on a Ghanaian family living in Alabama. The title refers to a lesson Gifty learned from a science teacher, that Homo sapiens are the only animal who believes they have transcended their Kingdom (23) - but of course, it also refers to her family who have immigrated from the Kingdom of Ghana. Gifty is raised in a Southern Pentecostal church, but loses her faith as she grows (transcends?) and embraces neuroscience as her chosen path. Or is it the Kingdom of Ghana that transcends its borders to flow around the world? Or Gifty's unique understanding of the mind as completely integrated with the heart and soul?

"In the book of Matthew, Jesus says You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." Here is a separation. Your heart, the part of you that feels. Your mind, the part of you that thinks. Your soul, the part of you that is. I almost never hear neuroscientists speak about the soul. Because of our work, we are often given to thinking about the part of humans that is the vital, inexplicable essence of ourselves, as the workings of our brains - mysterious, elegant, essential. Everything we don't understand about what makes a person a person can be uncovered once we understand this organ. There is no separation. Our brains are our hearts that feel and our minds that think and our souls that are. But when I was a child I called this essence a soul and I believed in its supremacy over the mind and the heart, its immutability and connection to Christ himself." (67)


As the novel unfolds, we learn why Gifty is drawn to this specialty and in particular her research on addiction. At first, I was fairly skeeved out by her research, in which she addicts mice to Ensure and then does brain surgery on them to try to isolate and understand the brain at the neuron level. But the way she understood this work through the lens of her religious upbringing was strikingly beautiful:

"When the wounded mouse finally died, I held his little body. I rubbed the top of his head, and I thought of it as a blessing, a baptism. Whenever I fed the mice or weighed them for the lever press task, I always thought of Jesus in the upper room, washing his disciples' feet. This moment of servitude, of being quite literally brought low, always reminded me that I needed these mice just as much as they needed me. More. What would I know about the brain without them? How could I perform my work, find answers to my questions? The collaboration that the mice and I have going in this lab is, if not holy, then at least sacrosanct. I have never, will never, tell anyone that I sometimes think this way, because I'm aware that the Christians in my life would find it blasphemous and the scientists would find it embarrassing, but the more I do this work the more I believe in a kind of holiness in our connection to everything on Earth. Holy is the mouse. Holy is the grain the mouse eats. Holy is the seed. Holy are we." (84)


As the novel progresses, the back story is filled out and we come to understand Gifty's father's absence, her brother Nana's opioid addiction, and her mother's depression. It's heartbreaking to read about a time period I lived through myself, heavy with "just say no" campaigns (no drugs! no sex!) that completely failed. It's uncomfortable to read about racism directed toward a black African family in the deep South, all the more so because they seem to have no real understanding of the racial history of the U.S. Gifty's trips to Ghana are fascinating, as well.

I could keep going, but you should just read the book. It's stunning and I'm so glad that Gyasi is just getting started - I can't wait to read a lifetime of novels written by her!

Homegoing is one of my favorite books of all time, so I was incredibly excited to read the second book by Yaa Gyasi. It is very different from Homegoing, but it is SO GOOD. Everything about this book felt true. The story of Gifty and her family and how their lives are changed by addiction and depression is beautifully written and important to read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this one!

4.5/5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Gifty is a PhD candidate at Stanford studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family’s loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and church, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

This book does not disappoint. Homegoing is one of my favorite books and Gyasi’s follow up to her stellar debut was fantastic. I was deeply moved by this book. It’s incredibly sad but I thought it was such an important story to tell. I loved how she connected Gifty’s research in present day to her family’s struggles in the past. Gyasi is a sensational storyteller and I highly recommend this book.

This novel is a portrait of a family from Ghana, immigrants who have expressed depression, addiction and grief. However it is also a novel about faith, science, religion and love. Highly recommend!

A brilliant PhD candidate's career in neuroscience is shaped by her struggles with her brother's fatal heroin overdose, her mother's resulting depression, and her own struggle with faith and love. Transcendent Kingdom is an emotional novel, at many times tragic and despairing, and at the same time hopeful.

Sittings with a Gyasi book is less reading than it is witnessing. It is a seemless step into her world, her words, and I wish I could sit with them and not stand up again until I'm finished, and simultaneously wish it wouldn't end. Transcendent Kingdom, as Homegoing, was both startling and quiet in it's brilliance. I really cannot say enough good things about this author and her work. Read Gyasi for the way she makes writing seem effortless, for the way the past and present are in constant conversation, for the references you'll miss and the ones she'll explain to you later. Read Gyasi when you feel like sitting outside on a warm day and meditating in the shade of a large tree. For the spiritual and the scientific, for the relationships between those things we find incongruous. Read Gyasi.

Absolutely brilliant. Just as strong as her debut although totally different. I can't wait to see what Yaa Gyasi does next.

These characters reached off the page and squeezed my heart SO HARD. I absolutely loved this book. I don't often mention an author's previous books in my reviews, but Homegoing was such a debut hit, it's hard to read this book without that story and its success in mind. That said, Transcendent Kingdom is so completely different from Homegoing and also even better, IMHO. I cannot wait to see what Gyasi writes next. She is certainly a literary force.

While I vastly preferred the author's first novel, Homegoing, Transcendent Kingdom is, I must admit, very well written. Yaa Gyasi has a gift clearly, even if I found this particular book (with it's often dark emphasis on faith, science, religion, & love) to be exhausting, rather than uplifting. While my personal rating for this book is low, I'm still strongly recommending it to others and including it for consideration in Library Reads. It's not for me, but I think it is for a LOT of other folks

Beautiful beautiful beautiful book. My favorite of 2020 so far. I will absolutely be recommending this to everyone and encouraging our fiction purchaser to buy this book.

I was not as impressed with this novel as I was the first. However I think there are a lot of topics in things that would be great for discussion-based reading in this story. The material is easy to read and easy to digest, but outside of the actual experiences of the main character I found this book lacking in complexity. Overall I think that this would be a great young adults green in dealing with things such as drug abuse, depression, immigrant families, and sexuality.

This is a beautiful follow up to Gyasi's first book. I loved the characters and story and will be purchasing it for my library!

A wonderful sophomore entry from Yaa Gyasi. Absolutely loved this book about a complicated family relationship. Well worth the (short) wait

I read and loved Homegoing, and yet I was still unprepared for the emotional impact of reading this book. There's something here to touch the feelings of just about everyone, with themes ranging from addiction, mental health, family, immigration, and the complexity of relationships...This book is going to mean a great deal to a whole lot of people. Wonderfully written and thoroughly engaging. I couldn't put it down!

At times the writing really drew me in and I enjoyed the spirituality component of the book. However, I did not enjoy this nearly as much as the authors first book, Homegoing. I just didn’t feel as if the story was connected all the way through...at the end I was left thinking that I didn’t quite “get’ everything the author was trying to convey.

Whew. This was a lot. There is SO MUCH packed into this book. So many storylines, so many thoughts. I didn't dislike it (though I disliked the ending quite a bit), but I don't think it's as immediately accessible as Homegoing was, and I say that for one reason, and it's that the philosophical stuff on faith and god and science is QUITE intense. Everything else--the brother stuff, the mom stuff, the immigrant stuff, the dad stuff, even the relationship/friendship stuff--is something I'd have no problem pushing into peoples' hands. It's all good. But it takes about 50% of the book to actually break that stuff open, and it's an extremely, extremely slow start before that.

I don't want to give the impression that I struggled to get through this, because I absolutely did not. But sometimes the science/faith stuff made my eyes want to wander, and it just...wasn't for me. There's an audience for this, but tbh, it's not the same audience that loved Homegoing.

Thanks to NetGalley and to the publisher for the digital ARC.