A Book Review : Memory And Other Shards by Rachel Ige

“Rachel Ige’s writing is beautiful.”

The above words were the first thoughts that came to mind when I was just two pages into her book – Memory and Other Shards.

I began reading it in the wee hours of the morning and in thirty minutes, I was done. Her prose is like honey; it flows with ease. No cluster. No clog. All of the stories in this collection have lots of hearts. What I love most is how strong themes are imbedded in the stories. Subtle. But. Powerful.

In the first story, Concobility, she writes about the audacity of an employee. The story comes with strong themes on patriarchy and the extinction of our indigenous languages;

…Yet, I knew my roots were important, that African culture was fading, being washed out by westernization and our local languages were being sunk beneath an ocean of colonization. Our identity has been compromised and soon enough our origin would be lost…

In Ratings of Insanity, the second story, Esu, the devil feels he stinks and needs a blood bath and so he instigates Boko Haram into violence by planting a mustard seed into the sandy heart of Sokoto dunes. A young man attempts to redeem mankind of the evil that is Boko Haram, by uprooting the seed that was planted by the devil in the sandy heart of Sokoto dunes.

In the third story Fate: Memories Gave Me Chills, the main character encounters a strange man who makes her question the popular saying, “There is safety in numbers”…

In the fourth story, Terror, the writer tells the story of a woman who is constantly abused by her husband, she kills him and prepares for the return of his ghost. I think this was my favorite story in the collection.

With the fifth story, Fear, the writer traumatizes us with suspense.

The last story in the collection, My Diary, My Best Friend, will make you want to love again – that is if you’ve ever given up on this universal principle called LOVE.

The settings of some of the stories left me with a nostalgic feeling, as most of them were set in the University of Ibadan, where I had my first degree. I love when writers are able to create new stories from the life they have lived before.

I hope to read more from Rachel Ige. This is an amazing collection and I recommend.

IGE IS A STAR!

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Rachel Ige is a lawyer. She writes short stories and poems and has had some of her works featured on platforms like FFM, The Naked Convos etc. and in anthologies like “Uites Write”, “October Stories” and “Epistles of Lies”. She has won prizes in Poetry contests like the Brigitte Poison Poetry contests 2017 (May Edition), Scribble the Future Poetry contest, and Okigbo poetry competition. She was also a finalist in the Ego Aghedo Poetry competition 2013. Memory and Other Shards is her first book.

Ige was one of the 2017 winners of the Words Rhymes & Rhythm Publisher’s Limited Green Author Prize (GAP 2017) for young unpublished Nigerian writers. She won the Prose (Short Story) category.

This win gave birth to her book, MEMORY AND OTHER SHARDS!

Remember to download the OKADA BOOK APP on your mobile devices. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE HER BOOK…