I finished We Need New Names last night and I liked it - didn’t love it, but it was an interesting read nonetheless!
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If you’re not a fan of child narrators then this probably isn’t one I’d recommend. I used to dislike them, but recently they’ve grown on me. Darling, the narrator, is a young girl living in an unnamed African country, although the author is Zimbabwean and there are lots of hints dropped.
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The first half of the novel is set in Africa, while in the second half there’s a distinct tone shift, Darling ages a few years and she’s now living in America with her aunt, something she dreamed about constantly as a younger girl. It’s then that the disillusionment sets in, realising the Great American Dream is nothing but a fantasy.
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Some of the chapters are more engaging than others. I read one of them twice, near the end, How They Lived, a searing, almost stream-of-consciousness chapter which moved away from Darling’s personal story to a broader commentary on immigrants living in the US. It was very powerful, and I almost wish we saw more of that style throughout the novel as a whole.
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I will be looking out for Bulawayo’s second novel coming out next year, 9 years after this was published, I’m interested in seeing how her style has developed.