Stephanie Jane reviewed Small Country by Gaël Faye
Strong sense of setting
4 stars
Small Country is a fairly short book, but one with a strong sense of its setting. At times I almost felt as though I was reading an autobiography because even cameo characters are vividly portrayed. Small Country does have elements in common with The Girl Who Smiled Beads (Clementine Wamariya) and The Running Man (Gilbert Tuhabonye) because of their Rwandan and Burundian war narratives, but I found this novel interesting because of its very different points of view towards the wars and resulting genocide.
Gabriel and his family live, essentially, in a white community so although his Maman is a black Rwandan woman, Gabriel's outlook is more guided by his white French Papa. The attitudes displayed by of most of the whites are frankly sickening and I quickly despised Papa for the way he spoke to Maman. This distancing of themselves from the country in which they live and in …
Small Country is a fairly short book, but one with a strong sense of its setting. At times I almost felt as though I was reading an autobiography because even cameo characters are vividly portrayed. Small Country does have elements in common with The Girl Who Smiled Beads (Clementine Wamariya) and The Running Man (Gilbert Tuhabonye) because of their Rwandan and Burundian war narratives, but I found this novel interesting because of its very different points of view towards the wars and resulting genocide.
Gabriel and his family live, essentially, in a white community so although his Maman is a black Rwandan woman, Gabriel's outlook is more guided by his white French Papa. The attitudes displayed by of most of the whites are frankly sickening and I quickly despised Papa for the way he spoke to Maman. This distancing of themselves from the country in which they live and in particular Papa's insistence on his children not learning about what is happening beyond his proscribed limits means Gabriel's childhood is even more of a fragile bubble than for most children I think, and the anticipation of that bubble bursting provides much of the tension within the story.
My only problem with this book, which is the same problem I had with Ponti (Sharlene Teo) is that Gabriel's story wasn't the most interesting one for me. Maman is a far more complex and conflicted character, yet she is often pushed aside by the author as well as by her family! However, overall, I enjoyed reading Small Country and look forward to discovering more of Faye's writing in due course.