Like "26a", it's partly set in Nigeria. The main character, Jess, is 8 when we meet her. She's suffering from a haiku obsession which soon passes. The first-person-privileged PoV and Jess's sporadic precosity mean that language registers are fluid.
-
It was Nigeria. That was the problem.
Nigeria felt ugly.
Nye. Jeer. Reee. Ah. (p.9) - "sleepy as she was, Jess somehow understood that this woman, ... was not smiling at her in particular, but at a child, at the idea of a child. Because she was an air hostess. Smiling at a child. " (p.10)
Some of the phrasing seems a little careless to me. E.g.
- "she allowed herself to stare openly and seriously at her grandfather, and he did the same" (p.20)
By the end of part 1 I'm beginning to think that's it's a book written for older children.
