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Little Family: A Novel Kindle Edition
A powerful novel about young people living at the margins of society, struggling to replace the homes they have lost with the one they have created together.
Hidden away from a harsh outside world, five young people have improvised a home in an abandoned airplane, a relic of their country’s tumultuous past. Elimane, the bookworm, is as street-smart as he is wise. Clever Khoudiemata maneuvers to keep the younger kids—athletic, pragmatic Ndevui, thoughtful Kpindi, and especially their newest member, Namsa—safe and fed. When Elimane makes himself of service to the shadowy William Handkerchief, it seems as if the little family may be able to keep the world at bay and their household intact. But when Khoudi comes under the spell of the “beautiful people”—the fortunate sons and daughters of the elite—the desire to resume an interrupted coming of age and follow her own destiny proves impossible to resist.
A profound and tender portrayal of the connections we forge to survive the fate we’re dealt, Little Family marks the further blossoming of a unique global voice.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRiverhead Books
- Publication dateApril 28, 2020
- File size1281 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Deeply affecting. . . . Little Family is an empathy-expanding story without the heavy gears of polemical fiction. . . . [Beah] conveys his unsettling assessment with a more delicate balance of tenderness and dread. . . . [The] little family have such a clear-eyed sense of their place as disposable members of society. To hear their story should make our confirmed blindness a little harder to maintain.” —The Washington Post
“Arguably the most-read African writer in contemporary literature.” —Vanity Fair
“[A] vibrant outing. . . . Beah informs his characters’ blend of street savvy and naïveté with bursts of details. . . . Fans of African postcolonial fiction are in for a treat.”—Publishers Weekly
“An ingenious setup. . . . readers will be drawn to discover what befalls a group fending for itself amid conflict and crime. Beah draws on both his life and imagination to depict children leading brave, provisional lives.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Beah portrays his characters with exquisite tenderness, imbuing them with a grace that belies their wretched situation… In a work less harrowing but no less effective than Radiance of Tomorrow, Beah continues to speak eloquently to the impact of colonialism on generations of African children for whom freedom is merely an illusion.” –Library Journal
“Unflinching and unadorned, Beah’s novel provides an indelible portrait of desperate survival.” —Booklist (starred review)
Praise for A Long Way Gone:
“Everyone in the world should read this book.” —The Washington Post
“A breathtaking and unselfpitying account of how a gentle spirit survives a childhood from which all innocence has suddenly been sucked out. . . truly riveting.” —Time
“Deeply moving, even uplifting. . . Beah's story . . . demands to be read.” —People
Praise for The Radiance of Tomorrow:
“Written with the moral urgency of a parable and the searing precision of a firsthand account . . . There is an allegorical richness to Beah's storytelling and a remarkable humanity to his characters. We see tragedy arriving not through the big wallops of war, but rather in corrosive increments.” —The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Kpindi brushed his hands against the low-hanging branches of the tree under which he sat, the morning dew on the leaves moistening his palms. Shivering, he wiped his face, youthful but coarsening, with his wet hands. This attempt to wake eyes that yearned to slumber was not successful. He sat back on his heels and crouch-walked to a shorter tree surrounded by tall grasses, at the junction of the dusty red paths. From this point, he could hear and see from afar anyone who approached, with plenty of time to decide how to react.
Satisfied with his line of sight, he stretched his bony frame, his rib cage drawing away from his long belly, and sat erect, with an unreadable stare calculated to inspire fear, curiosity, and confusion in anyone who happened upon him. Such an encounter had never occurred, and Kpindi liked it that way. He didn't want to be found. Not by those who were searching for something, in pain or confusion or fear. But even less by the kind of people who bore well-meaning smiles, yet whose eyes betrayed a disregard so habitual that they were no longer conscious of it.
Determined to stay alert, Kpindi concentrated on each of his senses in turn, so that every little whiff of smoke from newly kindled fires where breakfast plantains were frying, every fluttering of a bird in the branches, every whisk of a broom sweeping dried leaves from someone's yard, every bucket that clanked in the grasp of those going to fetch water, pulled him from the grip of slumber.
And then there were footsteps-footsteps that Kpindi did not recognize. He quieted his breathing until it fell beneath the passing breeze.
"She brought me right here every morning, even when she could barely walk." As soon as the next gust of wind shook the grasses, Kpindi hastened to a new hiding place. From this position, he could see the elder whose voice had reached him. She was sitting on a large flat stone, a young woman by her side. Her face, elegantly wrinkled, was lit with memory.
Lost as these two were, in either the joys or the bitterness of the past, Kpindi knew they were no threat. Absently, he pulled a kola nut from the front pocket of his trousers and took a bite, to keep himself awake and steady. The smell of the nut, and the familiar ritual of chewing it, brought his grandmother to mind-his grandmother with her constant joking, no matter how unhappy life had been back then. It was sweet to remember her face. He took another bite of the kola nut, keeping his eyes on the two women.
"Ah, never mind how you came into this world," his grandmother used to say. "You were brought here to live. So live!" And that was all he could ever get out of her.
The wind had dropped, and in the quiet, every sound was amplified. It seemed to Kpindi that his ears were vibrating. From his spot under the bushes, he imagined a context for each noise that reached his ears, a favorite pastime. Sometimes he would spend three or four hours on watch this way. Just then he heard a shriek, followed by a burst of laughter. He imagined the sounds as coming from a house nearby, where a father was getting ready for the day. His wife and five children had showered first, using up all the hot water, so that when it was his turn in the bathroom, cold water struck his body, and he shrieked. "Why must I suffer like this every morning?" he cried, as he did every morning. And the whole family, their faces smooth with Vaseline, the children in their school uniforms and their mother stylishly dressed to go run her waterfront store, joked and chatted as they did every morning too.
Was this a family he remembered, or a family he only imagined? Kpindi wasn't sure. He waited for the next sound to reach him, ready to dream up a fresh scenario.
The elderly woman stood up with surprising agility and began walking back toward town. The young woman looked around, but her gaze passed over Kpindi and went to the sky, and then she followed her companion. No need to warn the others, he decided.
Noises from the market were filling the air. The day had begun. As he rose to embrace the morning, the wind slapped a few leaves against Kpindi's face. Just then he heard the secret whistle. King's property, king's property, everything is correct.
He answered in turn. King's property, king's property, everything is correct.
2
Usually Khoudiemata made her visits to the market between dawn and the first appearance of the sun. There was a pause that came at this hour, a sigh, when the waking had to decide whether to spend their day being useful or being destructive. Raffia bag slung over her shoulder, beanie on her head, this bright-eyed young woman of eighteen with smooth, sharp cheekbones chose to remain suspended between the two, as her circumstances dictated.
Besides, she was drawn to the hidden beauty of this dilapidated place, which painted over whatever bad memories troubled her mind with the simple and intriguing brushstrokes of all that was on display. She glided among the traders, listening and watching as they called out to the passersby, letting them know what they wanted, what was essential for them to purchase. Madam, I have a special gift for your lovely daughter. Or Mister, don't you want to go home with a gift that says what doesn't exist in words? I have just that for you. The merchants had sweet words for almost everyone, but when Khoudiemata passed before them, they said nothing. It was as if she did not exist. She was not invisible-people's eyes caught sight of her-but somehow, she was forgotten as soon as she was glimpsed.
Khoudi did not mind. Because of her invisibility, people spoke honestly around her about their fears, hopes, and dreams. Sometimes she picked up important information that way, information that made it possible to continue to live at the edge of the lives of such people. Some mornings, she simply lingered upon their faces, living in the emotions that they wore-some exceptionally happy, some pensive, some unthinkably sad. Imagining their lives helped her to stay suspended between being useful and being destructive, while turning to her advantage everything that happened.
Now she watched as a fruit seller juggled a pinkish-red mango, a yellow pawpaw, and a green guava in the air before setting them on a platter as colorful as her flowered robe. Khoudi took in the glistening red of the palm oil being poured into bottles, the deep green of the cassava and sweet potato leaves that were constantly sprinkled with water so they didn't lose their freshness to the sun, the shiny dark hand that sprinkled the water, the head wraps of the women, so casual yet so elegant, the blue river nearby, the pink sand on its banks. She never tired of the pleasure of letting herself get swept away by such sights, delighted that their delight never grew stale. How could you not find in them some tolerance for whatever life threw at you?
Then the moment of sigh arrived, and this boisterous place seemed to freeze for a moment. The traders stopped mid-sentence, the echo of the last words they had said reverberating in the atmosphere. Their hands paused midway to wiping the sweat from their foreheads, their lips on the verge of bright smiles, their rumpled brows in the act of releasing sorrow. Khoudi created snapshots with her eyes that she could revisit later, when she was in need of something other than her life. Then, before the sigh came to an end, she took whatever food and money her hands could snatch, hid them in her raffia bag, and made her way out of the market.
Normally she would not stop, but today she came upon a strange sight. A man was sitting on the ground wearing khaki shorts, a long-sleeved white shirt, brown boots, and a brimmed khaki hat. He looked like one of those white men in the books she had read back when she was a schoolgirl, when she was living with that family who had let her stay with them awhile. She pushed the memory aside and concentrated instead on the image that came to mind, from one of those long-forgotten books. There were always photos of those white men standing in the bow of a boat, rowed by a man so shiningly dark that he became the only point of intensity in the photo. In each photograph, the boat seemed to be heading up or down a river, to discover what, she did not understand, then or now. Anyway, this man was not white, but he looked just as out of place. He was looking at an old map of Foloiya, which was itself strange, because no one around here was in the habit of looking to some piece of paper to help them understand the very land they stood upon. The map was flapping against the man's hand in the breeze, as if it wanted to fly away, knowing it had no use. How could an old map help you find your way in a place that shifted constantly, like the direction of the wind?
The man paused, waving her near without looking up. She hesitated, but his demeanor held none of the menace she was used to encountering in men toward young women like her.
"Do you know where this house is?" He extended the map to her, pointing at the far end. "I have covered everywhere except this last place." He kept his gaze on the map, his eyes searching it for an answer as it fluttered even more violently in the wind.
"That house is no longer there. It fell with the last rains," Khoudi told him with certainty.
"That explains it." He took a red pen from a chest pocket that was lined with other pens of various colors and crossed out the indicated location of the offending house. Then he began to fold the map with what seemed like excessive care. "Do you know where the people who lived there went?"
A car with tinted windows and fancy tires, too sleek for the landscape, zigzagged its way along the road, trying and failing to avoid the potholes. The confused fellow stood and saluted, which amused Khoudiemata, who had caught the insignia. It was not a government car.
"Why are you saluting? Do you know Rolls-Royce?" she asked, chuckling.
The man didn't answer, but held his salute until the car slowly disappeared down the mangled road. Then he repeated his question. "Do you know where the people who lived there went?"
"Why do you want to know?" Suspicion rose in her even as her instincts told her he was harmless. But harmless people work for wicked bosses, she thought.
"Because I am charged with taking the census. I am doing a thorough count of everyone in this town." He sounded annoyed, and with his index finger he gestured toward his chest and shoulders, indicating that his outfit with its various badges and adornments should have conveyed his importance to her.
"Is that so?" Khoudi stifled the impulse to laugh at how seriously he took himself. She was willing to bet he had not found many houses, or many people willing to come to the door at this early hour. In fact, most had already left, to chase the dreams that no longer came at night.
For the first time, the man looked in her direction, and his eyes went straight through her body as though someone else was standing right behind her. Without saying anything more, he went off in the direction of the house she had told him no longer existed.
Khoudi had long stopped worrying about what people saw or didn't see when they looked at her. Perhaps she was a reminder of the fragility of their own lives. "Don't you want to count me in your census, Mister?" she called after him mockingly, but even his shadow had turned its back on her. She was used to people assuming that someone like her didn't know anything, but she did know one thing for certain: The census meant nothing. It was just another ploy that let those in power pretend that something was being done. Young as she was, she had watched history set its wings and fly off in the wrong direction more than once.
At the end of the open field beyond Foloiya, Khoudiemata counted steps, more with the memory of her muscles than of her head. She cast her eyes about her one last time, then turned left into a wall of bushes. She slid her slender frame beneath them and pulled herself up on the other side, coming face-to-face with a high concrete wall topped with coils of barbed wire. She followed it to the right, stopping at a narrow break. She put her head through first, checking, then stepped through. She wet her lips and whistled the secret phrase to announce her arrival. KingÕs property, kingÕs property, everything is correct. Immediately she got a matching whistle back, with the repeated phrases they had agreed upon, to guard against impostors. Everything is correct, everything is correct.
She recognized Kpindi's distinctive inflection, confirmed when he continued with a melodic question: Anything for us? Anything for us? None of the others did that.
Let's meet at the house. Let's meet at the house, Khoudiemata's whistle replied. Her eyes caught the movement of the grasses as Kpindi made his last rounds.
Jumping over some scattered twigs lest she make any noise, Khoudi landed on the small path, barely body-wide, between the walls of shrubs. This was her path, their path. The other one, wide and easy to find, led people turn by promising turn only back to the crossroads or into town. She and the others had deliberately created these detours to deliver any who sought them right back where they had come.
"Namsa," Khoudi called softly, "you have learned to walk so quietly. I could barely hear your footsteps."
"How did you know I was coming your way, then?" answered the girl, her small voice reaching Khoudi over the wind.
"My nose told me," Khoudi replied.
"How?"
"You always wash yourself with the grass that smells like lemon."
And just as Khoudi heard Namsa sniffing, trying to catch the scent of her own body, she came into view at the bend. The two of them lit up at the sight of each other. Then Namsa placed her arm around the waist of the older girl and looked up at her, her pointed little face not yet even at the height of Khoudi's shoulders. They walked the rest of the way like that, Namsa sometimes skipping, their bodies brushing the branches on either side.
Product details
- ASIN : B07WHB2RZC
- Publisher : Riverhead Books (April 28, 2020)
- Publication date : April 28, 2020
- Language : English
- File size : 1281 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 271 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #481,119 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,141 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
- #2,755 in Historical Literary Fiction
- #2,796 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ishmael Beah, born in Sierra Leone, West Africa, is the # 1 New York Times & international bestselling author of "A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" & "Radiance of Tomorrow, A Novel." His books have been published in over 40 languages and won numerous prestigious awards and reviews. His Memoir was nominated for a Quill Award in the Best Debut Author category for 2007. Time Magazine named the book as one of the Top 10 Nonfiction books of 2007, ranking at number 3. Carolyn See from The Washington Post wrote, “Everyone in the world should read this book… We should read it to learn about the world and about what it means to be human.”
His novel, written with the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable is a powerful book about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times.
The New York Times finds in his writing an "allegorical richness" and a "remarkable humanity to his characters". His forthcoming book "Little Family, A Novel" will be published in April 28, 2020 by Riverhead Books (Penguin USA).
He is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and advocate for Children by War, and a member of the Human Rights Watch Children Advisory Committed. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and three children.
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It took me a while to get into it because it was hard at first to tell where the story was going. It wasn't until halfway through the book that it took a solid direction. There is good dialogue concerning political thought and the orphans day-to-day thoughts on survival leading up to that point though. Overall, it's not a fast paced book but there were a couple of exciting moments. I did highlight several sentences and phrases that I found thought-provoking or compelling.
The chapters are long, but the book is short. There are a total of ten chapters and the novel is 258 pages long.
Sample quotes:
"Today was just another exercise in dehumanization." -pg. 48
"If you are poor and you steal, then you are a thief. If you are a politician, then you are corrupt." -pg. 73
"...poverty has no holiday." -pg. 114
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2020
It took me a while to get into it because it was hard at first to tell where the story was going. It wasn't until halfway through the book that it took a solid direction. There is good dialogue concerning political thought and the orphans day-to-day thoughts on survival leading up to that point though. Overall, it's not a fast paced book but there were a couple of exciting moments. I did highlight several sentences and phrases that I found thought-provoking or compelling.
The chapters are long, but the book is short. There are a total of ten chapters and the novel is 258 pages long.
Sample quotes:
"Today was just another exercise in dehumanization." -pg. 48
"If you are poor and you steal, then you are a thief. If you are a politician, then you are corrupt." -pg. 73
"...poverty has no holiday." -pg. 114
“Poverty has a great appetite for eating one's dignity, but Elimane was one of those people who fought to keep his, even when that was the only battle he was winning."
When I finished this book, I immediately said I will read Beah's other books. A Long Way Gone has lingered on my shelf for years but I'll get back to that in a moment.
Beah's writing is beautiful and transporting. I followed this little family of five—Elimane, Khoudiemata, Ndevui, Kpindi and Namsa—wondering what happened that brought them all together, but immediately being drawn to their determination to live and love the family they've become.
They have an unlikely home, the remains of an airplane that crashed, but they've turned it into a place all their own. After I stopped waiting for the back story, I began to understand there is much to be understood from the lives they live right now to consume my thoughts and emotions. I worried for them each day as "corrupted" for food and money, necessities for each day. I was relieved each night as they returned home.
Each character also had something that was their own. Elimane had his books; Khoudiemata her personal escape to 96 Degrees; Ndevui his morning runs with the music in his mind; Kpindi seems happiest when they all are together; Namsa, the youngest of the family who likes to go listen to Shadrach the Messiah on the beach front.
Each character had a place in my heart Khoudi is who the book eventually centers on. Khoudi as a central figure in the little family, the big sister, wants more than that role in her life. We watch her study the people she comes in contact with to shed the identity, even briefly, of being part of her family. To wonder what it's like to go to school and hang out with friends but also blossoming into a young woman. It's a surprise to her each time she does this, since the majority of her time is spent with the littles family. Her beauty is hidden or made invisible in bulky men's clothes she and Namsa wear as a protection from unwelcome advances or dangers (as women).
I loved Khoudi and all of the little family. I laughed at times and I was stressed at times because I feared the worst for them.
Little Family is about the lives of young people, with more resilience, intelligence and resourcefulness than the people who overlook them, believe them to be.
The surprise in Beah's story telling, in the characters feels extraordinary but tackles so many themes that before you know it, the book has ended. One thing that resonated with me while reading is that there is a difference between surviving and living, one should not have to choose between them.
Next up, A Long Way Gone...
This was very well written, it is eye opening, educational and describes for us what is going on halfway across the world, making it a must read in my opinion. The prose is fantastic, and this is an emotional and important read.
Thank you to Edelweiss and Riverhead Books for the #gifted book to review.