Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil

'Elegant and elegiac' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Guardian 'A writer of spectacular talent' Observer On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, DC, he's a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer - an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except his best friend, Meredith - the one person who seems not to judge him. When his father accidentally finds out, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding towards a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed. Speak No Evil is a novel about the power of words and self-identification, about who gets to speak and who has the power to speak for other people.
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Reviews

Photo of Moray Lyle McIntosh
Moray Lyle McIntosh@bookish_arcadia
2 stars
Dec 5, 2021

It is certainly a devastating story of homophobia and racism and identity with a tragic end that is in no doubt from the very beginning. It's a powerful story and an important one that tackles violence and prejudice and the consequences of making our own feelings and desires more important than those of others. I wouldn't dream of disputing any of these facts, they're basically incontestable (or should be). My problem lies with the very factor that has sent other reviewers into rhapsodies, and that is the writing. It's highly stylized, with little punctuation and a free-form structure that breaks down and challenges usual reading practice - so far so good, I love experimental writing, whatever barrier you want to break I'm right there with you. But it had to be effective (and affective), it has to work. And this just didn't work for me at all. The prose developed an overbearing cadence that made it feel repetitive and sucked all the life out of the characters and events. Intellectually I could acknowledge the terrible tragedy but by the time events emerged the prose had sapped all emotion from me but irritation by blurring both people and places, the writing just swept the actual story away and buried it so that it could hardly be understood let alone felt. It also created a very childlike tone, and while the characters are young the writing felt like the unadorned recitation of a much younger person, an endless procession of and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened without pause for breath or thought or significant development. In the end it was a case of style over substance, the substance is there in the hard-hitting events but the style meant that it was just barely skimmed.

Photo of C. J. Daley
C. J. Daley @cjdscurrentread
5 stars
May 13, 2023
Photo of heleen de boever
heleen de boever@hlndb
3 stars
Apr 14, 2023
Photo of Roger Amundsen
Roger Amundsen@gododger
4 stars
Mar 8, 2022
Photo of Laura England
Laura England @lauraengland
5 stars
Feb 26, 2022
Photo of nico alexander
nico alexander@ghostlyghost
3 stars
Feb 24, 2022
Photo of Mallory Foutch
Mallory Foutch@malloryfoutch
3 stars
Jan 17, 2022
Photo of Jennifer Dieter
Jennifer Dieter@jdeets03
4 stars
Dec 30, 2021
Photo of Jessie Bertram
Jessie Bertram@jessiebertram
5 stars
Dec 23, 2021
Photo of Christian Beck
Christian Beck@cmbeck
5 stars
Sep 26, 2021
Photo of Vera
Vera@yuyuv
2 stars
Aug 27, 2021
Photo of Teshia Treuhaft
Teshia Treuhaft@teshia
3 stars
Aug 12, 2021