“Ayosa had many such memories, of the Yonder Days, before she’d turned into a girl. She had been a wriggling thing, unbound, light as a Sunday morning thought. She’d drifted on by, watching people. Well, watching mostly her mama. She had watched her mama for years before that day when her mama felt her close by and said, please-please-please I need you. Most people did not have these sorts of memories.”

The insides of her eyelids were orange, and her tongue tasted cantaloupe on itself. Her chest heaved and her breath oozed out of her nose, hot and stinging, like candle wax.”

This is both a coming of age book and the story of a mother/daughter bond. I hate magical realism, so I should not have even attempted to read this book. Unfortunately, I also did not enjoy the more realistic aspects of the book. I just did not connect with the writing style or characters and this book wasn’t for me.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

a lot of interesting things to say about mothers and daughters and intergenerational memory, and it's magical and beautifully written, but ultimately it is at times so interesting and unique it seems to keep the reader at a distance! still, a very impressive work and i'll keep an eye out for this author!

A young girl left alone comes to terms with her loneliness and the past that causes her mother to constantly flee.

This one is a bit too slow and overly written for my personal preferences. I loved the lyrical quality of the author's writing style, but after awhile, it began to feel like too much work in order for me to feel like I could just fall into the story. Readers that appreciate that deeply developed story will surely enjoy this story!

Okwiri Odour’s Things They Lost slowly, but artfully, tells the story of four generations of the Brown family in fictional Mapeli Town, somewhere in Africa. It opens in 1988 on Epitaph Day, a day of collective memories and grief when people call out the names of all those they have lost. Young, book-loving Ayosa Ataraxis Brown desperately needs to feel wanted by her mother Nabumbo Promise Brown, who comes and goes like tumbleweed. Even during her rare time at home, Nabumbo Promise disappears inside herself, suffering from her own troubled past and making promises she never keeps.

Odour gradually unwinds the complex story not only of mother and daughter, but also of Nabumbo Promise’s sister Rosette and brother Maxwell Truth, grandmother Lola Freedom Brown, and great-grandmother Mabel Brown, the white British Colonial woman who, in the early 1900s built the large, now-decaying home Ayosa too often lives in alone.

“Sitting on the groaning staircase inside the decaying manor, was the loneliest girl in the world,” Odour writes. Ayosa’s only company are the Fatumas, originally Indian Ocean sea creatures, who now hide in the attic and console Ayosa, dancing chakacha for all the world’s missing mothers and ‘for all the daughters left at home waiting.”

Although Nabumbo Promise Brown orders Ayosha to avoid other people and never to go into town, the girl finds ways to connect with the larger world whether listening to the radio as Ms. Temperance recites aching poetry that speaks to the broken-hearted child, visiting Sindano in her Mutheu Must Go Café where no customer ever comes, or befriending Mbiu, the girl whose mother had been shot full of holes and ended up looking like a carrot grater.

In a magical world in which jolly anna birds in the yard mockingly scream “Jolly anna ha-ha-ha,” in which wraiths threaten to steal people away by tempting them with whatever it is that those people most want or need, Ayosa seeks a place in the world—a place where she belongs, where others need and love her.
Those willing to read every vivid, poetic word, suspend disbelief, and enter a strange—yet strangely real—world haunted by its British colonial past will find themselves rooting for Ayosa Ataraxis Brown and her fight for a better life worth living.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for an advance reader copy of this highly recommended novel.

Read Around the World: <b>Kenya</b>

What. THE. HECK?
I had great hopes for this book, but it just wasn't for me. I couldn't connect with the characters, the story, the whole thing. I kept wanting to love this, then even like it and it just didn't happen. I just finished it and I absolutely cannot tell you what it was about and really can only remember one character and one of the stories within the story [it is pretty unforgettable so there is that]. I felt this was disjointed and chaotic and well, it just didn't work for me. I am really disappointed to be honest. This was one book I was really looking forward to.

Thank you to NetGalley, Okwiri Oduor, and Scribner for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I included this in the April edition of Apartment Therapy's monthly new book roundup.

“Things They Lost” by Okwiri Oduor: Drenched in magic and mystery, this debut novel explores complicated mother/daughter relationships and the power of friendship.

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/best-book-april-2022-37058891

I admit up front that I struggled a bit with this novel that weaves Kenyan folklore and mystical realism into the story of a mother and daughter, Ayosa has the ability to see the memories of her mother Nabumbo Promise, who has lived a life filled with trauma. She doesn't spend much time with her daughter. Ayosa forges a bond with two other women- Sindano and Mbiu. The language is a bit dense but at the same time there are some gorgeously written phrases. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

Lost On Me
Unfortunately, I felt like this book was boring, and I have struggled to put my finger on exactly the reasons (but here goes).

Things They Lost is written in the third person, and I really believe that it would have been better off written in the first person. There are scenes which should be highly emotional; however, they fall flat. It felt like I was reading a newspaper article which meant that I didn’t connect very well to the characters.

The author does a lot of telling versus showing. For example, one of the characters constructs something over a course of days, and no one seems to notice. That should have been a big scene. It was glossed over in a few paragraphs. It would have been much more poignant to really describe the experience, play-by-play, glimpsing the character’s emotions of putting her heart and soul into a project, only to be ignored by the person she loves most in the world.

There is also too much wriggling with some version of the word mentioned 30 times and mud more than 40 (this is an ARC so the final word count might be more or less). Also, in the format that I read, there were no quotation marks when the characters were speaking. I have a difficult time tracking with my eyes so this was disorientating for me.

In some regards, the author was too obvious. For example, there was a confrontation in a church, and the characters then sat down and started to process the events that just occurred, stating the obvious. This took away from my experience as a reader.

The author has a strong command of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs with a very diverse vocabulary and has very flowery prose. The author is clearly very capable, but this book just wasn’t my cup of tea.

The first 100 pages were incredibly dense and hard to get through. I would have appreciate a faster introduction to Ayosa's mother and friend so that we become invested in their story.

A beautiful, heart-wrenching, story that easily blurs the lines of reality with the spiritual world. From moment one, you deeply feel for Ayosa, with a tragic upbringing and a survivor's spirit. This is a title that demands your attention and requires you to be 'all in', but it is well worth it.