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Book Reviewed by:The Girl with the Louding Voice meets The Water Dancer in Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ's magical, award-winning literary debut, Dazzling, offering a new take on West African mythology.
Treasure and her mother lost everything when Treasure's father died. Haggling for scraps in the market, Treasure meets a man who promises to change their fortunes, but his feet are hovering just a few inches above the ground. He's a spirit, and he promises to bring Treasure's beloved father back to life if she'll do one terrible thing for him first.
Ozoemena has an itch in the middle of her back. It's an itch that speaks to her patrilineal destiny, an honor never before bestowed upon a girl, to defend the land and protect its people by becoming a Leopard. Her father impressed upon her what an honor this was before he vanished, but it's one she couldn't want less—she has enough to worry about as she tries to fit in at a new boarding school.
But as the two girls reckon with their burgeoning wildness and the legacy of their missing fathers, Ozoemena's fellow students start to vanish. Treasure's obligations to the spirit escalate, and Ozoemena's duty of protection as a Leopard grows. Soon the girls' destinies and choices alike set them on a dangerous collision course. Ultimately, they must ask themselves: in a world that always says no to women, what must two young girls sacrifice to get what is theirs?
The two storylines vacillate not only between perspective but also time. This format is handled impressively, sustaining interest and suspense despite the reader's lack of knowledge about what exactly is going on. Emelumadu achieves this in part through the episodic nature of the chapters, which read as an end in themselves, a feature that compensates somewhat for the book's ending, which feels abrupt and out of step with the emotional and ethical nuances of what comes before. Despite this disappointment, Dazzling is memorable in its portrayal of the persistence of grief, and it excels in showing what is sacrificed when people become mired in the past...continued
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(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).
In Chikodili Emelumadu's Dazzling, Ozoemena inherits the ability to transform into a leopard from her uncle, a power that comes with certain obligations and responsibilities. Her father's side of the family belongs to a secret society that maintains this tradition, a plot detail inspired in part by real-life phenomena. In an interview with Brittle Paper, Emelumadu notes that leopards have played a significant part in Igbo culture as sacred figures (as well as in other cultures of West African regions), and that historical "leopard societies" believed that they could take on the powers of the leopard for the purpose of keeping order in their communities.
"Not quite extrajudicial but skirting on the cusp, it was their job to punish crimes...
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If you liked Dazzling, try these:
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Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne
A vibrant, immersive read that takes the reader on a dizzying journey through Nigerian mythology. Emelụmadụ does what I love best in this novel: she lays bare human weaknesses and celebrates female strength; she builds a world bursting with magic, bright and visceral; she has created two immensely memorable protagonists and woven a story that will linger in my mind for a long time.
