This Mournable Body

As I will be reading and reviewing the 2020 Booker Prize Shortlist over the next few weeks, I have set a guide as to which I will be holding each book to. These series of reviews will be used to find the most deserving winner of the prize based on my own critiques. I am looking for a novel that is 1. Covers interesting topics and issues, 2. Can be teachable, and 3. Excels in telling a compelling story; these are the standards I will be holding each of the books to along the shortlist.

TsiTsi Dangaremba writes a gripping novel,based in her home country of Zimbabwe, following and potentially ending her trilogy after her booming success of Nervous Conditions in 1988. The last in the trilogy, This Mournable Body, was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, a prize that celebrates the best novel published in the United Kingdom. Dangarembga’s novel was one of the six finalists in last year’s prize, and the first book I have read and am reviewing. 

This Mournable Body, is the third in a trilogy which has followed the life of Tambudzai Sigauke, a Zimbabwean woman who witnessed a civil war between 1964 and 1979. The series of novels follows Tambudzai’s life, and in this final book we are introduced to Tambu’s life as an unmarried, unemployed, middle-aged woman, living off of minimal income from previous jobs and attempting to find herself. This story follows the many ups and downs that follows Tambu as an “unnatural woman” in Zimbabwe and how she attempts to fix her life to be who she believed she was destined to be. 

I would like to start off the first portion of my critique by just letting it be said that this novel, in my opinion, is extremely different from anything I have ever read before. I have never read African Literature before, and I have no knowledge of the political issues across the African continent which permeate this novel. Otherwise this book was an experience to read, I do not think that I have ever felt more melancholic while reading. I was so distraught and disgusted by some of the scenes that came through the novel, things that I have never been exposed to before and seemed to be glanced over as to show Tambudzai’s insensitivity and the life she has lived. This is a slight spoiler, so warning, when Tambudzai’s housemate Mako is raped by Shine, a different male housemate, her emotions and actions towards what just occurred are so nonchalant as if it were any other day and nothing occurred.

“ At much the same moment you realize there is nothing you can do or say since it is already done. Mako’s noise does not undo anything. As neither you nor Bertha want to continue considering her cause of grief, you say goodbye, telling Mako you will see her when she has herself under control. For one reason or another, however, you fail to leave.” 

This Mournable Body, is effective at showing the hardened condition which many Zimbabwean, African, and all women have to live with in their daily lives. A story that contextualizes gender issues, race issues, class issues, trauma, post-colonialism and African culture. The novel does a fairly decent job in getting many of these thematic issues throughout the story without shoving it in your face, it is all subtle and requires close reading to pick up on the issues that Dangarembga wants the reader to notice and contemplate. An interesting choice that Dangarembga made was to write the novel in a second-person narrative, something I have never seen before, and something that was done quite well to immerse the reader into the life of Tambudzai and Zimbabwe. The second-person narration can be quite difficult to wrap your head around within the first few pages but after a chapter or so it forces you to throw yourself into the story and see yourself in the shows and emotions of Tambudzai. I believe that Dangarembga’s choice of narration is what made me so uncomfortable while reading this novel, it made me hate myself as Tambudzai, even though I was not doing anything she was I thought I was in this story doing the some of the terrible things that she did and didn’t do. If I read another book with a second-person narrative this is going to be the standard that I hold it up to in terms of narration. 

Some of the things that I would have liked to see from Dangarembga would be more background as to what brought Tambudzai to this point in her life. Now this might be due to the fact that it is the final book in a trilogy, and I have not read the other books but now I may, but there are some instances within the book that are mentioned and almost glanced over as the reader is meant to have that background. 

“ Her mouth is a pit. She is pulling you in. You do not want her to entomb you. You drop your gaze but do not walk off because on the one hand you are hemmed in by the crowd. On the other, if you return to solitude, you will fall back inside yourself where there is no place to hide.” 

Tambudzai is unwilling to help her hostelmate Gertrude when she is being assaulted by a group of passengers, strangers and the combi driver. Tambudzai has some sort of trauma that isn’t given much of a background to and the reader can only infer so much that it can stem from her years of being exposed to war, losing family and friends, or the expectations that her family and she laid out for herself after going to college. There is very limited information on the trauma and places that have brought Tambudzai to this hardened, desensitized status and as a reader it would be very helpful to have just a little to go off of.  To the standards that I have set for this set of reviews I believe that This Mournable Body does fairly well. The novel covers interesting issues and is set in a very different place but there is a bit of a disconnect between the issues Dangarembga wants to address and the self-inflicting torture that Tambudzai causes which covers these topics. I do believe that this would be teacheable unless it were to be taught in a college classroom, it has too many scenes that would not go over well with younger students and issues that a younger audience would not be able to fully understand. With that being said though, to teach it in a college classroom would require a teacher that is willing to go further than what is just on the page. I would say that This Mournable Body is a compelling story but without reading the two prior books in the series, thus losing some important information to Tambudzai’s life and the culture growing in Zimbabwe it is difficult to get completely enthralled within the story. However, on its own many parts of the story are very captivating and deserve to be recognized. Based on my own opinions I would give This Mournable Body, by Tsitsi Dangarembga an overall score of 5.8/10.