I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this book, and I’m finding them hard to sort out. So, if this review feels more train-of-thought than usual, I apologize!

Butter Honey Pig Bread is a magical realism book about three Nigerian women: Kambirinachi, and her twin daughters, Kehinde and Taiye, telling the intergenerational stories of Kambirinachi and her upbringing, and her daughters’. After a series of traumas, including the loss of their husband and father, the family becomes estranged, with Taiye and Kehinde following their own paths across the world, leaving Kambirinachi in Nigeria with her grief. From there, the book is about finding identity, and the things we do when we leave things unsaid.

The writing in this book is beautiful, and the descriptions of music, clothing, and cities were rich and deep. The book has a very strong focus on food, detailed to such a degree you can cook some of the foods by their descriptions -- and make you hungry. But all in all, I did not find building a strong connection to any of the characters easy. I was not engaged, and while I was transported to Lagos, Paris, and Halifax, it felt superficial. 

The book is quite non-linear, jumping around between Kambirinachi’s, Kehinde’s and Taiye’s past and present, flipping between the different characters, and between their different times, as they remember, or reflect. While normally I enjoy books with this storytelling style, I wonder if this time it did impact my connection to the characters and story.

Lastly, I found the ending came too soon.  The core conflicts of the story are barely resolved before the book ends. I’ve read books that have ended this way, but this time it actually made it feel like they hadn’t been resolved at all. It was still too uncertain. 

I’m seeing lots of very positive feedback about this book, so if you like the sound of it, definitely give it a go, but it just didn’t work for me this time, especially compared to the other Canada Reads novels. We will see what the debaters think!