Chinelo Okparanta

Harry Sylvester Bird

Lindsay

Despite my brief existence on earth, I knew enough to know that blood was not in fact love. Love was love because of memory. Love without memory was null. Blood with the wrong kind of memory was also null.

It was there for anyone to see, with even the most minimal of research, and yet. Either they truthfully did not know, or they were pretending not to know to spare their guilty consciences. If they did know, I decided, it was a lesson: One could have one’s cake and eat it too. All one had to do was to cultivate a selective form of amnesia.

If they didn’t know, no problem. Simply wear your ignorance with confidence, like a God- given and indisputable birthright.

Christina Pappas

I fully expected to love this book based on the description - "a brilliant, provocative, up-to-the-minute novel about a young white man’s education and miseducation in contemporary America" who falls in love with a black woman from Nigeria and is forced to reckon with his racist upbringing and society at large? Wow, yes, sign me up. Unfortunately, I found the description far more intriguing and powerful than the book itself. 

It started off strong - we begin with a teenage Harry enduring a safari in Tanzania with his unabashedly racist parents, Chevy and Wayne, who "wear their ignorance with confidence, like a God-given and indisputable birthright" - but by the halfway point (once Harry moves out), it had become something I had to push my way through, and it remained that way through the end.

I understand that Harry, especially as he ages into adulthood, is not intended to be a likable character - but he really seemed to push the boundaries of an evil cartoon caricature. I was disgusted by him throughout most of the book (in some moments, that disgust progressed to visceral, skin-crawling repulsion). One of my biggest issues with this story: I couldn't for the life of me find any reason Maryam would tolerate five minutes in his company, let alone pursue a relationship with him. 

At one point, Harry recognizes Maryam's (regrettably short-lived) frustration towards him, describing her as "visibly weary of me" - coincidentally, that's exactly how I felt about him and his cowardly, gaslightly, fetishizing, self-pitying behaviors. (I could go on.) This is a man who has accepted a scholarship from a white-supremacy organization and soothed himself by telling himself that it's OK because he's not white in his heart, a man who is constantly comparing his own life to that of slaves and concluding his own circumstances are as bad if not worse. How anyone could perceive him as sympathetic is beyond me. 

To be clear, I'm by no means indifferent to this book: I actively hated it. I'm a white woman, and I am open to the idea that I was *supposed* to hate this book. Maybe there's something that hits a little too close to home: Harry's probably the type of guy to throw a BLM sign on his front lawn, then privately vote NIMBY (and on the off chance that a black family does move in next door, well, how "exotic" for him). That all said, I just didn't find any nuance in Harry's character. Even though he's supposedly reflecting back on his choices at the end, I saw no evidence of real understanding. 

Two stars because the writing itself was strong, and frankly because even though I hated this book, it's an accomplishment in that it elicited such strong feelings. (I'm very curious to see how others respond to this book.) 

Thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest (as honest as it gets!) review.

Harry Sylvester Bird

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