Welcome to the Misty Bloom Book Club! Hi, it's Ada. Hope you're taking good care of yourself and doing well. We’re on episode 2 already? Can you believe it? Thanks for sticking with me. It’s just gonna get better and better. In this episode I will be reviewing Season Of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. Let’s get into it! So the reason I selected this book was because I wanted to read a book by a northern nigerian author. Perhaps you know this already, but umm, most of your best known Nigerian authors, including yours truly, are southeners. This novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms is set in northern nigeria against the backdrop of Hausa culture and Islamic conventions of behavior. So this totally fit the bill. Let’s start with a summary. Season of Crimson Blossoms follows a forbidden romance between 55 year old Binta, a respectable Muslim widow and Reza, the local weed dealing overlord who also moonlights as a political thug. And clearly, with this taboo type relationship there’s bound to be drama, shenanigans, secrets, lies, implications and consequences for not only Binta and Reza, but also for their families, and for the wider community. So I was excited to see how this would all play out. But before I dive into my review, let me introduce you properly to Binta and Reza to help contextualize the rest of my review. I’ll start with Binta. Like I said, Binta is a widow. She's tragically lost her husband and her first born son to socio political circumstances which are endemic to Nigeria and maybe even particularly the northern nigerian experience. The book interestingly is set sometime during the first ever attacks by the Boko Haram terrorist group and there are some references to that happening in the background. But anyway back to Binta. She lives with her 8 year old granddaughter, Ummi, love that name, Ummi, and her 16 year old niece, Faiza whose father and brother were murdered in one of the many religious riots that plague northern nigeria. On the other hand, Reza, Binta’s lover is also a victim of a society that quite frankly and sadly sees him as disposable and has thrown him away. He is a 25 year old criminal with serious mommy issues. And I’ll talk about that a little bit later. Ok, let’s just jump into what I thought was successful about this novel. First thing - This is an accomplished novel and does not read like a debut effort. Abubakar Adam Ibrahim is a writer who's not an amateur. He is not new to this. The author came across as fully formed, self assured, and has a clear and unhesitating perspective. To me, the author shows off prose that is observant and thoughtful and there is a maturity to the writing. This novel contains some beautifully written prose which I will read to you to underscore what I’ve just said. For example on page 123, the author writes, "...the two bus drivers were standing by the door, arms hanging by their sides. One was Yoruba and the other Kanuri, but Reza thought they looked alike; the same worn faces, the same sweat-stained jumpers, and the same strained eyes. Occupational siblings." What I just read shows off the author's strong observational skills and appropriate use of metaphor which separates amateurs from professionals. A second strength of this novel is the interrogation of Hausa and Islamic norms. For example, this novel explores a custom in which mothers are disallowed from calling their firstborn children by name or being affectionate toward them. Or even acknowledging their later born children. This is a custom that I'd never heard of and I found myself upset by it and responding viscerally to it. But it was also very intriguing. And I loved that the author interrogated this part of the culture while also handling it with tenderness. love love loved it. It gave not only a deeper insight into this dare I say questionable custom but it also has real consequences for the characters' lives. I appreciated that the author didn’t use this custom as a device to make his novel appear cool. You know what I mean? You know how people do that? Throw in something that has a novelty appeal to compensate for being boring or other weaknessnesses in their storytelling. In this case, the tradition served a purpose which was to explain the motivations of the characters and propel the story forward. For me, it was one of the most moving parts of the story. No pun intended haha. Guys, I really liked Reza. He is a very well drawn, sympathetic character. He makes questionable choices no doubt and does some really bad things. But you know, it's in the nature of a rogue to also be charming and I think the author did an amazing job with infusing this character with equal parts compassion and charisma without shying away from the moral complexities that Reza presents. In this book, the author does a great job with balancing out Reza. I mean, it's just like any other human being, we're never just one thing. Reza is the kind of character, the kind person on the fringes of society, most middle-class people who read literary fiction like season of crimson blossoms and yes, I'm calling out myself and dragging all of you who are listening to this too. Reza is the type of person we will probably never interact with in our lifetimes so shout out to Binta for defying social norms. And I think it's important to feature characters like Reza in fiction so that middle-class people are forced to humanize the types of people they would typically avoid, ignore, or even recoil from. In my opinion, fiction has a responsibility to tell the truth and the author tells this truth well. Thirdly, I enjoyed the realism of the novel. I felt a sense of place, a strong sense of the characters, their foods, their routines and habits, desires, their pain. Their interactions all felt very authentic and genuine. The novel did not at all feel false or artificial. It all felt real, like I was transported into their town and paying witness to their lives. There was a strong sense of realism woven throughout the novel. It was very well done. Last but not least, I also thought the author's use of pacing and suspense as literary devices was pretty sharp. I liked how the author would delay revealing the character’s motivations for withholding significant information. It set me up for a greater expectation of more to come. Which is what every writer should be aiming to do with their readers. So two thumbs up to Abubakar Adam Ibrahim for doing this so well. So that's it in terms of the major strengths of the book. But before I dive into what I thought was a little less successful about this novel here's a quick message from my sponsor. Welcome back! Thanks for staying with me. So let's pivot to the less successful aspects of this novel. Cons First, the tone of the writing felt a little too serious to me. It wasn't so bad, however, as to deter me from continuing to read. It kind of reminded me a little bit of how I felt reading Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. In Season of Crimson blossoms there’s no playfulness or lightness to the prose. No air, no space to move and play. The only glimpses of humor are to be found at the beginning of a few of the chapters. Each chapter in the book starts with a proverb. For example Chapter 10 starts with a proverb that says… the search for a black goat should start way before nightfall… which I found to be pretty amusing, clearly it doesn't take much to amuse me. However the intrinsic nature of a proverb is not only to present wisdom but to do so sometimes in a cheeky, shady way. But the proverbs in this book as far as I could tell, are not original to the author so I can not ascribe the humor that they provide to the author. Anyhoo, interestingly both of these writers, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim and Ta-Nehisi Coates are also journalists. So, I suspect that because of their backgrounds reporting the news and presenting factual information in a sober manner, this style of writing bleeds into their fiction leaving it feeling a little stiff. I'll give you an example. I’ll read you a line from page 12 of the book but before I do, I’ll lay out the scene for you. In this scene, Binta attends a madrasa, which is islamic school, with women in her neighborhood. On this particular day, their teacher has called in sick and the women decide to spend the time productively by going over previous lessons but they cannot agree on which topics to revise so they agree to disperse. And this is how the author describes their dispersal… after a lengthy and discordant debate garnished with thinly coated sarcasm the women left in groups… In my opinion, this was an opportunity for lightness or humor, you know like the women can’t get it together, but for whatever reason, the author just chose not to take it. so I struggled with the overall serious tone of the book. Please understand that my desire for air or lightness is not to, you know, escape from the importance of the themes that are being discussed but as a reader I demand, mmm look at me demanding things. I demand, as a reader to experience the fuller breadth of human emotion. I want joy, sadness, empathy, grief, levity, loss, good Humor, compassion, i want to smile, I wanna grunt at something, I wanted be pissed off. Look, I'm spending a good chunk of my time with this book and taking hours over several days to engage with the characters and have them feel like real people that I am interacting with. and when you interact with people in real life, guess what, you experience a spectrum of emotion. So, this should be no different. This novel felt monotone. And while we're still on the subject of humor, there is a book Binta owns that's mentioned pretty frequently throughout the course of season of crimson blossoms. The book is titled The Major Sins and is written by Az Zahabi. I know a book within a book. pretty meta huh? Anyhow the major sins by az zahabi feat
