Thanks to the publisher for an e-ARC of this one! There’s been a lot of love for Gyasi this past year but this was my first by her and I went in with limited knowledge of the book. This was a really beautiful and painful story in so many different ways. Gifty, the MC, is a PhD student studying addiction after her brother overdosed when she was younger. Narrated from her point of view, we constantly come to back to issues of addiction as she tries to study whether there are ways to help.

The book also tackles two other big areas of discussion: science vs religion and the experience of immigrants in the States. Gifty’s family had immigrated to the US from Ghana before she was born and their lives and the racism they face, some instances more insidious than others, is nothing like they expected. Gifty was also raised in a religious household, her priest playing a significant role in her family’s life throughout the book, but she struggles to make sense of the science and religion dichotomy, especially as her experience of Christianity has mostly taught her to be ashamed of herself.

I really enjoyed the author’s writing and these big issues that Gifty struggles with. It felt a little harder to get a sense of her character but there’s so much she’s still working through that we really needed the whole book to get a clear view of who she is as she starts to recognize the harms done to her in her childhood and beyond. I was reminded a lot of Sammie’s post on the trauma of being Black for Shattering Stigmas, as Gifty is so entrenched in this church and Christianity from a young age that she does feel the trauma of being Black before coming to terms with her identity as a Black woman.

I did find the ending rather abrupt and it felt so off from the rest of the story. It was too neat and wrapped up based on the previous chapter so I would’ve preferred to have taken the time to get there. There was also details about Gifty’s work that didn’t feel quite right. The author mentions in the acknowledgements that she based the research off of her friend’s so there’s likely some accuracy there but Gifty is in the final year of her PhD and still doing experiments, not having written a single word of her thesis. For the PhD students I’ve known, experiments would’ve been completely wrapped up and that last year would be entirely dedicated to writing so that struck me as odd. That aside, it’s a really wonderful book if you’re in the mood for some heavier topics.

This was a beautiful book about family, grief, and a desperate attempt to understand addiction.

As a PhD student I identified strongly with Gifty and her need to make the events around her make sense. Her brother, a gifted athlete, suddenly becomes addicted to pain killers. Her mother, a strong single parent breaks down at the loss of a child and then suddenly during her PhD. What motivates us to seek out these different behaviours? This is a wonderful description of the residual effects of familial grief and depression. The emotional depth of Gyasi’s writing is beautiful.
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While the content is radically different from Homegoing, Gyasi sticks to a fragmented narrative structure. The only fully realized character in TK is Gifty, and even she is hidden from the reader through flashbacks and time shifts. I adored the messiness of these transitions. These shifts mimicked the mind of someone coping with loss and latching onto memories that suddenly surface.
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Gifty’s research is reflected in her present and past. You see her seeking approval and acceptance from multiple people.
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I really enjoyed how Gyasi explored why PhD students study the topics that they choose. These choices are often very personal and usually relate to something in their past.

Appreciate the work, but not to my taste generally and so do not feel comfortable talking in more detail.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi was one on my highly anticipated fall releases and I am so happy it lived up to the hype I built up in my own mind after reading Homegoing earlier this summer.

Trascendent Kingdom is the story of Gifty, a young neuroscientist doing research into the pleasure centres in the brain to help learn more about addiction and depression. Addiction when they are overly responsive and depression when they stop responding to anything. Gifty chose this research because of her own family, her brother’s opioid addiction and her mother’s chronic depression. Not only does this book delve into those issues and how they affected Gifty, but also highlights Gifty’s religious upbringing and how she was a part of the only Black family in town and in her church. Themes of science vs religion, otherness, connection to family and friends vs isolation, addiction and mental health and the stigma that can be isolating to those who suffer and their loved ones, and many more themes are all wrapped up in a beautiful story of a scientist looking for answers.

Highly recommend reading this novel. I think this would be the perfect book club novel as there is so much to discuss and debate within.

Transcendent Kingdom felt less like a novel and more like an exploration of ideas. As an exploration of ideas, it was solid. I enjoyed reading about Gifty's thoughts and musings on religion and science, especially when she connected them to her work in neuroscience. Instead of simply privileging one over the other, or discounting one in favour of the other, Gyasi devotes time to examining both as complex entities with a considerable impact on Gifty and her perspective.

As a narrative, though, Transcendent Kingdom really fell short for me. The story was too discombobulated, going back and forth between the past and the present in a way that was disorienting more than anything else. What little narrative this book had was made all the more fragmented and confusing by moving so quickly and frequently between those two timelines. The result was a novel that felt like it was about someone thinking about their life and philosophy, as opposed to an actual story about that person. The distinction is an important one, and what ultimately let this book down.

(Thanks to Penguin Random House Canada for providing me with an e-ARC of this in exchange for an honest review!)

Big thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the digital review copy!

This is the very definition of a five-star novel. I usually avoid religion in fiction because, as an agnostic, I'm not really interested in the subject matter. However, through Yaa Gyasi's excellent prose, I was fully invested in Gifty's internal struggle between science and the theology she grew up with. Her struggles with identity, spirituality, family, mental health, and losing a loved one to addiction are universal themes which any reader should be able to appreciate. Yaa Gyasi's writing is truly breathtaking and heart-wrenching, which makes this story even more powerful.

This is a new favourite, and I HIGHLY recommend it.

The perfect follow up to Homegoing. It's easy to say that anyone who enjoyed Yaa Gyasi's first book will also get a lot out of this one. I was ruined by the ending, and the journey for some characters left me absolutely broken. In particular Grity's relationship with her mother was incredibly nuanced and wrenching to read. Easily one of the best books of the year, but I expected nothing less after Homegoing, and it's clear that Gyasi knew that!

I found Transcendent Kingdom to be less accessible than Gyasi’s first novel Homegoing. It is also less grand in scope, focusing more on a fewer number of characters than her previous novel. 

There is so much emotional depth and beautiful writing that was present in Homegoing, but overall I found this to be a less polished novel. Several of the parts delving into the scientific themes come off like they’re written by a high school student writing a paper, paraphrasing what they read on Wikipedia. The ending to the novel is also rather abrupt, and didn’t really feel like it brought much resolution.

Even though this novel didn’t draw me in as much as Gyasi’s first book did, I can’t help but look forward to reading what comes from her in the future.

I didn't love this book as much as I hoped I would. I found it confusing as the timeline jumped all over the place throughout the book. The writing contains a lot of emotional depth and you really feel for Gifty throughout the story. Topics include science, faith, addiction and mental illness.

Thank you to Penguin Randomhouse Canada and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“What do you say to a woman’s back, your mother’s back? The curve of it, the sloping, sagging flesh of it, was more recognizable to me now than her face, which was once the only thing in the world that I sought out the most.”

I’ve been sitting on this review for about a week. I think this is one of those novels that stays with you for a long time. You can see from the quote above that Gyasi’s writing is striking, but it’s also subtle. It’s really only later, in quiet contemplation, that you realize you’ve read something profound.

Transcendent Kingdom tells the story of a Ghanian-American family. We experience, from Gifty’s point of view, her father’s disappearance back to Ghana, her golden-boy brother Nana’s descent into addiction, and her mother’s depression and suicide attempt. Gyasi handles these tough subjects with eloquence, beauty and sensitivity. At one point, Gifty says, “Though I had never been an addict, addiction, and the avoidance of it, had been running my life.” Ultimately, this is what the story is about: Gifty’s questioning, “Why?” Why did her brother become addicted? Why couldn’t he stop? This question tears at her head and her heart and tore at mine as well.

Also central to the story is Gifty’s exploration of her faith and all of the questions and doubts she has growing up Christian, seeing suffering, being confronted by non-believers, and working in science. I felt this was really well done and it was one of my favourite things about the book. I’m not sure this would appeal to everyone, but I saw a lot of my own experience reflected back to me and loved it because of that.

Transcendent Kingdom is very different from Homegoing, but I think it’ll also be well received. It will make you think. And it will make you feel.

This was an amazing book! It was a bit of a gut punch, but so poignant and thoughtful. A close and beautiful look at on family hardships and triumphs. A powerful exploration of faith. mental health and the bonds of family. Hard, yet hopeful. One of the best books of the year. I enjoyed reading the narrators memory and reckoning with her past. It was really good!

TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM by Yaa Gyasi is a really heavy novel and very thought provoking. This book revolves around Gifty, a neuroscience student at Stanford, and her Ghanaian family in Alabama and how her family deals with addiction, depression and struggles of faith. The writing is very poignant and I could really feel and understand the complexities to Gifty’s inner thoughts and emotions. It was really interesting to read about Gifty and her relationships since they were so complex. There’s such sadness in this book but I did enjoy reading it. There was a nice easy to follow flow in the timeline that featured flashbacks to Gifty’s childhood. I really felt like I got to know Gifty so well that at the end of the book I was happy to have read her story.

I’m really disappointed because I thought I would love this one based on the themes, but it just wasn’t for me.  Maybe it wasn’t the right time for me, but after really liking the first several chapters, I found it hard to pay attention and had to push myself the rest of the way through.  There were some parts where the stories told or ideas expressed piqued my interest, but as a whole I was disappointed that it didn’t speak to me more.

This book will be covered by Liberty on the Sept 1st All the Books podcast (so I was unable to cover it myself).

Gyasi was born in Ghana, but raised in Alabama.  Her debut novel, 'Homegoing' won numerous awards and is a Heather's Pick.  This new book tells the story of Gifty who is in her final year of neuroscience at Stanford.  Through recollections we learn that Gifty's mom and dad came to the USA from Ghana with her older brother Nana, when he was young.  Gifty was born in the USA, but shorty after her dad returned to Ghana and never came back. Gifty was raised in a religious home that never had much money. Her brother was a gifted athlete that became addicted to opioids and her mother also suffered from mental illness.  Gifty's career is all about finding solutions to the pain.  The book deals with science, religion, drug addiction and the immigrant experience. It is beautifully written and a good recommendation for customers looking for a slightly more literary book and are okay with something that moves a little slower, with more thought and analysis than action.

A few years ago when I read Homegoing I was immediately struck by the abilities of Yaa Gyasi as a writer and knew that I would read anything that she put out. Transcendent Kingdom is a completely different type of novel than her first, but her beautiful writing and ability to write families is still there.

This book focuses on Gifty, a woman pursuing her PHD in Medicine while studying addiction in mice, and her relationship with her mother who has depression and has come to live with her. You then are transported back and forth to the past where you see Gifty's childhood growing up with an absent father and brother who become addicted to drugs.

I was immediately drawn into Gifty's story and felt so connected to her and everything that she was going through. The way that Yaa Gyasi weaves stories of depression, addiction, religion, and science together is masterful and it was hard to leave the story when I had to do something else.

The title of this book, Transcendent Kingdom, describes the story so well. The story follows Gifty, a highly intelligent neuroscience student, her depressive mother, and brother, Nana who passed away from a heroin overdose. 

Raised in a religious home to an incredibly faithful mother, young Gifty prays regularly to God as well. When Nana passes away, Gifty walks away from her faith and chooses the most difficult major she can find to keep her mind occupied. As a science major, she seeks scientific answers to the questions of human suffering, loss, and pain, that she ponders as she recounts her life with Nana and her absent father. 

As she mulls over these questions as an adult, she finds herself drawn back to her lost faith and conversations with God. What she seeks is a blend of who she's become, with science, faith, and family. However, this book is not a religious book in a traditional sense. It's really a story of human loss, suffering, family, history, and discovering how one fits into it all. In Gifty's world, she's discovered a transcendent kingdom that transcends all of who she is and what the world is in her eyes.