Hiding in Plain Sight

October 20, 2014
Somali writer Farah's (Crossbones) 12th novel takes on religious extremism and sexual politics in Africa in this bold but ponderous novel about a woman reassembling her family in the wake of a tragic event. After her older half-brother, Aar, a high-ranking UN official, is killed in a terrorist attack on the organization's headquarters in Mogadiscio, Somalia, the 35-year-old, half-Italian, half-Somali Bella is forced to put her photography career on hold and travel to Nairobi, where Aar's teenage children, Salif and Dahaba, live. There, she adjusts to her new role of surrogate mother and shares her grief with family friends and Aar's former lover, a Swedish UN official named Gunilla, while waging a custody battle with Aar's estranged wife, Valerie, who arrives with the woman for whom she left her family 10 years earlier, Padmini. While the tension between Valerie and Bella is compelling, and Valerie and Padmini's experiences as lesbians living in Africa illuminating, the novel otherwise suffers from a lack of forward movement. Whole sections are spent on quotidian scenes that do nothing to develop the story or characters. Many of the more interesting threads and subplots remain underdeveloped, such as the attack that kills Aar and one about a friend of Valerie and Padmini's whose gay bar in Nairobi is raided, leaving the reader wishing Farah had more tightly focused his narrative.

February 1, 2015
Farah's ("Crossbones") examination of a family crisis in Kenya takes readers beyond the headlines into a grieving woman's heart. Globe-trotting Somali-Italian photographer Bella credits her success to "total control" of her subjects and is equally canny in personal affairs, not disclosing her address to her lovers. Her self-determining lifestyle is upended when half-brother Aar, a UN logistics officer, is killed by political extremists. Jettisoning her priorities, Bella hastens to Nairobi to care for Aar's children and contend with domestic worries experienced the world over--navigation in an unfamiliar kitchen, teenage angst, and the fear that the mother who abandoned Aar's son and daughter will resurface. The benign turbulence of household transition evokes the loss of identity felt by Bella and others after fleeing violence and unrest in Somalia--intimate reportage affording relatable perspective. Robin Miles's versatile narration, especially when depicting Bella's emerging parental warmth, animates the thoughtfully paced, revelatory tale. VERDICT Recommended both as an addition or fine introduction to the work of this Nobel-nominated author. ["Will appeal to lovers of international literature but also to readers drawn to the dynamics of families in flux," read the review of the Riverhead hc, "LJ" 12/14.]--Linda Sappenfield, Round Rock P.L., TX

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