What a gripping dark novel, violent in a subdued (kinda) sneaky way, which doesn't really leave you much in terms of hope or catharsis.

Kambili e Jaja are siblings, they aren't able to smile, can't play with their classmates, can't watch tv or listen to music, but pray with their parents every morning and evening in a completely joyless way. Until they go and stay for a week at their aunt's family, and everything changes.

Two things will stick with me: how masterfully the writer depicts the abyss of domestic horror, that crescendo that makes you sit on edge waiting for the strike to come, how miserable and torn and sorry she makes you feel, yet without being overwhelming. Like a creepy all too real nightmare.

Second: the role of religion. Reading through Pacific Asian novels and Caribbean, I noticed the pattern of missionaries and colonisation, until I found Frantz Fanon voice in The wretched of the earth:

"The Church in the colonies is the white people's Church, the foreigner's Church. She does not call the native to God's ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor"

I'm not saying it's only so in general terms, but in this specific book, it's definitely so. And I got so filled with anger