Book Review

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Blighted Blues

M. O. Ené

(ISBN: 0-9545037-1-6; Adonis and Abbey Publishers, London, England, 2005; pp.  183; Price, $$16.00)

Available at: http://www.adinis-abbey.com, AMAZON.COM &  BARNES & NOBLE

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Even in the West, when one is consumed in a deep thought, slouching in a sofa, he usually, would straddle his chin with the palm of his hand while resting the elbow on the thigh, until someone suggests to him, "a penny for your thought" in order to snap him back into the fold of the present. Displaying the power of analogy, in the preface, "The chant of ants," "Blighted Blues" opens with a persuading sentence, "Chrys sat ...with his left forearm wedged between the chin and thigh as if physically preventing his mouth from uttering a word." But this technique is precisely a reverse anecdote that would have certainly caused the reader to want to ask Chrys, "A penny for your thought?"

Then comes the response, not only in the art of color in imagination but also in metaphor. Colorful words as evidenced in this quote, "No one spoke as she kept gnawing her chewing gum at sharp strokes like a nanny goat in labour." Subsequent pages are just as captivating. "Chrys treated Jackie like an eagle's egg." "Hell hath no fury like Jackie supposedly scorned. In fact, hell had no more fury - she took it all."

"Blighted Blues" waxes poetic. Using the experience as an exhaust engineer, the author represents the thoughts of Chrys drawing from the functions of a combustion-powered mechanical vessel: "My thoughts raced... off went the harbinger of anxiety... polluting with toxic and noisy emissions... noisily but successfully left with my woman, leaving alone at the airport a lonely man."

How about "rhymes and rhythms!" "Blighted Blues" spoke of the Arinze arrogance and the ability to make the "impossible plausible; the seemingly impossible, possible" "This is not religion, which is about 'fat faith and flaccid facts... collating facts, not fiction.'" "But here was an angry man looking for a vent, any vent, a butt to kick, any butt to shine his shoes." Jesse Jackson would be impressed!

And sex sells, especially when programmed with lust and laced with booze and lies-to-go. The height of dramatic irony in this case is that the narrator in "Blighted Blues," observed that Chrys knew it was a waste of time trying to get people to read books that were not about sex, scandal, soap gossip and more sex."

So, what do find in "Blighted Blues?" The narrator starts exactly with such lustful technique. Modern society, it seems, cannot shake the imagination of what Eve's boat and rump looked like behind those leaves! O.K.

"The lady looked as though she had just stepped of a spacecraft from Planet prestige, as if she was conjured out of Vogue magazine and her bosom and backside retouched with a bit of firm but fresh flesh. She was a sight to behold. He stopped within a hearing distance to feed his eyes." But he isn't talking about Eve! I wish he weren't so erotic, I thought to myself. But as I proceed down the page, in the next few lines, the answer to my worries is revealed: I encounter the inscription in bold-print, "DILUTION IS NO SOLUTION TO POLLUTION." Therefore, I guess, he decides to let it all hang out. After all, "Blighted Blues" is also about Africans immersed in European carnal love affairs and intrigue.

Very well then! The narrator continues, "The lace, skin-tone Tonga briefs left little to the imagination; she might as well be without them. The same-design, colour-to-match bra had a delicate stretch lace top; its unpadded, front-fastening, half-moon cups allowed the lace portion half-custody of her boobs. He had always teased Jackie that she could do with a slice of silicone. What he saw several moons after was both eye-popping and mouth-watering." "Barry White took over the background with her favourite number: 'You're My Everything.' From here, it was an express ride back to the Garden of Eden for yet another bite of the apple." Even me! I'll have to admit I am beginning to blush as I read the story to my missionary elder sister.

Such matters arising are that the narrator speaks as if his audience are "all Igbo." If that is so, then the format is quite alright. But if not, then the narrator obviously employs a few tortured proverbs. The word, "tortured" implies that certain (African) Igbo analogies by their constitution are quite difficult to translate literally into the English language without nearly distorting or losing their real significance. One such complex and compound example reads, "When two palm trees adjoin, their fronds abut... and Yolanda knew when to stop soiling the village spring."

There are others but a couple of more instances should suffice: "When the fowl farts, the ground becomes a nuisance." Perhaps only an Igbo reader familiar with free animal husbandry (who knows that a lone chicken could take off, and just run and chuckle in the middle of the day without anything pursuing it) could make sense of this message, flowery and elegant nonetheless. "Go ahead an insult me. The doormat said I am a cow; what's new?" Probably, a person conversant with tradition could relate to the practice of using hide as a footmat, otherwise, the essence may be lost to the foreign or modern reader who is grappling to look into the Igbo worldview and learn from it.

It may be a bit hard for the uninformed of African tradition to read "Blighted Blues" with ease because some of the languages and uneven breaks, which sometimes make it a task to grasp at one pass, who is actually talking. Though the author tries to distinguish himself as the narrator from the characters, he may not have conveyed it concisely by paying little attention to exclamation and when a new paragraph ought to begin.

One example is on page 5, paragraph 4, which could easily have been broken into three paragraphs but he bundled it into the same paragraph as if it is Chrys who is still speaking. "Everyone was taken aback!" should do well to stand alone in a new paragraph in order to clearly demarcate the narrator from the actor.

Overall, except for a couple of typos in addition, the book is a timely release that stimulates. Determined not to let the Igbo culture of proverbs and wise sayings die, and more to revive it, "Blighted Blues," though fiction, is a good work and an interesting read for all who wish to brush up on their knowledge of Igbo value systems and how Western influence has a way of successfully corroding such values.