Review by Booklist Review
Abbas has always lived a quiet life, believing that his own personal history was nobody's business but his own. When a stroke nearly paralyzes him at 63, however, he suddenly becomes eager to share everything from the tiniest details of his childhood in Zanzibar to the sweeping tales of his travels around the world. Abbas' wife, Maryam, decides to call their children, Jamal and Hannah, home to bear witness to their father's tales and aid in his recovery. Maryam, Jamal, and Hannah, all somewhat preoccupied with their own lives and memories, absorb Abbas' stories with a mixture of curiosity, disgust, and wonderment. Gurnah alternates Abbas' recollections and stories from his wife and children, blending themes of reconciliation, identity, belonging, and alienation. Gurnah's fluid, poetic prose contains striking turns of phrase that allow the reader to appreciate the beauty in even the most mundane memories. Fans of Half the Sky (2009) and The Kite Runner (2011) will appreciate the mixing of narratives in The Last Gift as the various perspectives blend to create a truly powerful novel.--Turza, Stephanie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Gurnah's latest (after Paradise) follows an East African immigrant living in a small English town as he and his family reckon with his past, which has long been shrouded in mystery. After suffering a debilitating stroke at age 63, Abbas suddenly wants to speak for the first time about the youthful decisions that drove him to leave his native Zanzibar, become a sailor, and eventually marry and settle down in England. As his wife, Maryam, and their children, Hanna and Jamal, care for the ailing Abbas, they too find themselves confronting their memories. Maryam, for her part, recalls her childhood as a foundling without parents or ancestry, which drove her to cling to Abbas and compromise her dreams. In the meantime, the rebellious Hanna and her English lover, Nick, encounter his family's condescension and bigotry, while the contemplative grad student Jamal finds love and discovers his vocation as a writer. Over the course of this haunting novel, the dying Abbas prepares a last gift of memory for his wife and children. Though the pacing is slow at times, Gurnah manages to match a strong plot with powerful musings on mortality, the weight of memory, and the struggle to establish a postcolonial identity. Agent: Deborah Rogers, Rogers, Coleridge & White. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Although England is not their country of origin, Abbas and Maryam are settled there. Abbas has so deeply buried his past that none of the family knows his secrets, not even Maryam. Adult children Hannah and Jamal are thoroughly anglicized as they make their way in the world. Hannah, outspoken and abrasive, has just moved to be near her new boyfriend, while the quiet Jamal has taken up residence in student housing and has met a girl who intrigues him. Both siblings have grown somewhat distant from their father and his profound silences, as well as from their mother, who has her own secrets. -Abbas's sudden collapse leads to his incapacitation, forcing them all to adapt to altered circumstances as best they can. That "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," as Tolstoy said, is effectively shown here. VERDICT Zanzibar-born Gurnah (Paradise; By the Sea) offers intense, meticulously rendered portrayals of characters struggling to make something new in a new land. Particularly haunting is Abbas, the wanderer, who has lost his place in the world, if only for a while. For all readers of literary fiction.-Joyce Townsend, Pittsburg, CA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An immigrant father's silence about his background roils the life of his family in England; in this awkward eighth novel, Gurnah (Desertion, 2005, etc.), a Briton of Zanzibari descent, revisits the theme of alienation. It was almost love at first sight. In 1974, they were working in the same factory in the English town of Exeter. Maryam was 17; Abbas was 34. Maryam was a dark-complected foundling, abandoned outside a hospital. Her foster parents, Indian immigrants, after some initial kindness, began treating her like a slave, so it was an easy decision to elope with Abbas, though she knew virtually nothing about him. He proves a good husband, and they have two children, Hanna and Jamal. Though he is loving with them too, Abbas never opens up about his background, and this becomes a source of frustration for Maryam and the kids. Who is this gentle, withdrawn man? He was born in Zanzibar. His family were Indian Muslims, dirt poor. His father, a subsistence farmer, was a tyrant, but Abbas escaped to a teacher training college. A bright future was doomed when he was tricked into an arranged marriage; his bride was already pregnant. At 19, Abbas fled Zanzibar and became a sailor for 15 years before settling in England. It is his irrational shame at abandoning his deceitful wife that has kept his lips sealed. The novel begins with the 62-year-old Abbas collapsing at home: It's the first of three strokes. Maryam pressures him to tape-record his memories. Gurnah moves jarringly between past and present, in which the grown children, better at life than their parents, are discovering sex and confronting racism. More damagingly, the author disregards fiction's first commandment: Show, don't tell. So the family stays out of focus, less a unit than four individuals struggling with their own destinies. The talking cure has come almost too late for the oddly prim ex-sailor and his family. There is nothing to involve the reader in this protagonist's dilemma.]]]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
