{"id":3842,"date":"2020-04-06T22:22:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T21:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3842"},"modified":"2020-06-18T22:28:10","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T21:28:10","slug":"girl-living-through-horror-is-still-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3842","title":{"rendered":"Girl: Living through horror is still living"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Boko Haram. Remember them. That they kidnapped and enslaved 276 school girls around this time of year \u2013 April 14 – six years ago. 112 are still missing. Those who escaped, or were exchanged, did not necessarily have happy endings. Many of them bore children. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nNovelist Edna O\u2019Brian went to Nigeria to hear their stories, do her\nresearch. The book she has written as a result, is devastating. The\nstory she has woven from the threads of many, is a tapestry patterned\nwith the darkest despair, shot through with rosettes of life\u2019s\nsimplest beauties. One of these is the beauty of her sentences. Each\nseems to stand apart, as a pearl on a novel-length rosary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\nIn the introduction to Tolstoy\u2019s Anna Karenin<\/em>,\ntranslator Rosemary Edmonds tells how Tolstoy praised Pushkin\u2019s art\nof plunging the reader straight into the heart of the story, \u201cthe\nmiddle of the action\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nHe would have admired O\u2019Brien for that, too. If not so much the\nfirst sentence, certainly the first paragraph:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n \u201cI\nwas a girl once, but not any more. I smell. Blood dried and crusted\nall over me, and my wrapper in shreds. My insides, a morass. Hurtled\nthrough this forest that I saw, that first awful night, when I and my\nfriends were snatched from the school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAnd so in Girl, <\/em>we\nenter a nightmare, only to realise we keep on living. That life\ncontains its own force. Pushing us, however unwilling we are, through\nwhatever disasters we must pass. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIn her protagonist, she presents a\nnarrator who is detached, as if in permanent shock. Which is also to\nsay, in a state of constant survival; all matters are stripped to\ntheir essence and primal instinct is called to service. This is\nbrought into particular focus once the narrator gives birth to a\ndaughter \u2013 whether from rape or the husband she is forced to marry\n\u2013 and the girl becomes a mother. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThere are passages in the book when the word \u2018keen\u2019 comes to\nmind. As in, \u2018to keen\u2019. In a biblical sense. To fall to one\u2019s\nknees as darkness covers the earth, too dry to weep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nOf course O\u2019Brien never got to speak to any of the girls who remain\nmissing. Thus this is a story of one who escaped. Mercifully, she\nremains able to perceive light, kindness, the poignancy of which\nleaves you stunned amidst the horror of what has befallen. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The experience raises the spectre of madness. There is no way of a sane mind avoiding it. It is the observations of what catalyses it that makes the novel so perceptive. It is not of itself \u2013 possibly never of itself \u2013 but brought about through betrayal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nMadness looms when the last hope is\ndestroyed. Being forced into betraying the only person to trust us,\nbecause we ourselves are betrayed, is a black cloak of ashes. A\nprison. Hope, even the tiniest sliver, and desperation are needed to\nescape. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The girls from Chibok, who had gathered at the school to write their final exams, and kidnapped on a whim because their humanity meant nothing to their captors, are a stain of suffering on our global consciences. One of many, but one O\u2019Brien examines for its patterns and its intricacy, and holds up to the daylight for us too, to reckon with. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boko Haram. Remember them. That they kidnapped and enslaved 276 school girls around this time of year \u2013 April 14 – six years ago. 112 are still missing. Those who … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3844,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842\/revisions\/3844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}