New book tackles issue of family secrets
YOUNG author Prosper W Makara’s second book “Perfect Imperfections” (DarlngKind Publishers, 2017) invests much thought into the family unit and the bewildering secrets that sometimes abound within it.
It is no lie that some secrets do not last forever. This truth is embedded in our ancestors’ words when they coined the idiom “rinamanyanga hariputirwe”.
Many families all over the world are in a mess as parents and children harbour devastating secrets which drain away all the love, the trust, and compassion that once prevailed.
The characters in Makara’s novel are involved in a complex world of love, jealous, betrayal and conspiracies of silence. They call themselves a “family” while they each bear a secret that would later break them apart.
Makara’s novel is sectioned, that is, “it uses titles to separate discreet passages, whether long or short”.
The passages are dated and yet nonlinear. For instance, the events in the first passage happen in 1976 in Sinoia (Rhodesia). Rumbidzai terminates her second pregnancy to grab an opportunity to study in England.
The second passage takes you to 2016 in Borrowdale (Harare) where you meet Rochelle and her husband Trevor.
Rochelle has received an urgent call from home. In the next, you drift back to 1977 at Cambridge University (England) where you meet Hugh Truman.
Rumbi has changed her name to Tracy (the reader will know this name-change later near the end!). She is at Cambridge and later marries Truman but between them there are devastating secrets.
The next passage takes you to 2016 at Baines Hospital (Harare) where Rutendo, an eye doctor, has received a call from home.
By now, the reader infers Rutendo and Rochelle are sisters because of the phone call and the narration moves on disjointedly like that. At first you may be tempted to think you are reading short stories but gradually the pieces come together.
This is one of the features of “Perfect Imperfections” which compelled Bookshelf to have a chat with author Makara.
How good it felt to read the work of a young writer and discover he has, with a certain striving for ‘cleverness’, made use of the nonlinear system of narration, a technique seemingly complex and which demands one to muster his/her creative powers to the maximum.
Makara, a fan of celebrated Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, believes that he has done his job well because this technique did justice to his story.
“I have used the nonlinear writing structure because I really wanted to be unique and I thought it would do justice to my story. I love narrating other stories within the main plot-line.
I also believe that a book shouldn’t be about one topic that is why I included diverse topics and subplots,” he said.
Indeed, as you read “Perfect Imperfections” you drift from passage to passage in suspense, meeting new characters and issues. Albeit the unique structure of the novel, there are many lessons for readers especially in the love and marriage circles.
You are struck with various questions sparked by the strange behaviours of the characters. Hell breaks loose when the father of the three sisters (Rutendo, Rochelle and Natsai) dies.
He leaves behind a will that tells them there is a fourth sister who also deserves a part of the inheritance.
A character named Hugh Truman is a lonely man yet married to Tracy (whose original name is Rumbidzai).
Truman’s grandfather dies but leaves a will that reveals Hugh has a son he bore long back with his “grandfather’s garden boy’s daughter”.
Hugh is happy to connect with his past because his present life with Tracy lacks compassion.
Tracy has not yet told him she was once married to a man named Tafara with whom she has a child! As more and more family secrets are revealed in captivating “sub-plotted” scenes, you are exposed to issues of love, sexuality, unfaithfulness involving in-laws or the extended family. Each character has a secret hidden beneath his/her “the sheep skin’.
Having said all this, Makara’s book needs a patient reader due to its multi-layers of themes and an almost “multitude” of characters. However, as it is said, the actual reading completes the circle.
Makara’s first book is an anthology of short stories called “Crushed Desire”.