Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi: 5/5.
“For most of us, mechanically, physically, it’s harder to die than it is to live. But still we try to die. We drive too fast down winding roads, we have sex with strangers without wearing protection, we drink, we use drugs. We try to squeeze a little more life out of our lives.”
Everything everyone else has said is true: this novel is exquisite.
Gifty is a twenty-eight year old PhD candidate at Stanford University studying neuroscience, her days spent meticulously carrying out her research on reward-seeking behavior in mice. While Gifty’s intelligence is obvious to her professors and peers, she keeps the reason for her research to herself: her older brother Nana, a once promising athlete in their Alabama town until an ankle injury, died of a heroin overdose during Gifty’s formative years. Now it is just Gifty and her mother, a woman who left her native Ghana to bring her family to America in hopes of better opportunities. When Gifty’s mother, who has been battling crippling depression following her son’s death, comes to visit, Gifty must come to terms with her family’s past, her Ghanaian heritage and the ways it impacts her, the Christian faith she was raised with and which her mother has relied on to find strength, and more.
This is a nimble novel that packs a powerful punch. It’s incredible how much exposition, plot, and character development Gyasi achieves in this slim novel. In just 260 pages, the reader becomes intimately familiar with Gifty and her inner thoughts, her family and its attending complex dynamics, and her doctoral neuroscience research. Gyasi manages to weave several seemingly disparate threads into a singular cohesive narrative voice, with the different themes playing off of each other to great effect.
In the end, all the threads come together to form a gorgeous climax and denouement, resulting in a surprisingly sweet ending. I have to admit, I was expecting this story to have a bittersweet (or, at best, frustratingly apathetic) ending. But I was happy to see Gyasi gave the reader and her protagonist the happy (though not cloying or unrealistic) ending that Gifty so desperately wants, even though she’s afraid to say so. It was this ending, the unexpected high note at the end, that cemented my love for this story.
It was a wonderful character-driven story for those who read novels to get to know the characters and the inner workings of their minds. Here, Gyasi expertly balances philosophical musings with sharp observation. Critics will probably say too little happens, and if you pick this up hoping for the same time- and space-bending action that came with Gyasi’s Homegoing, you will probably be disappointed. But Gyasi achieves a different sort of magic with this book, creating in Gifty a character who jumps off the page and whose thoughts reach incredible depth without becoming unreachable. It’s a stellar, sincere story anchored by a beautifully complex character.
Comments