Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
213 pages
Published 1959
Read from January 12 to January 14
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Achebe's prose is direct, clear, disarmingly simple -- qualities that elevate his work to incisive beauty. But that simplicity can lessen the emotional weight of the stories he tells here. As I read Things Fall Apart I marveled at Achebe's expertise and economy in structuring the events and vignettes of Okonkwo's life and society to build a much larger whole, but in the last third or so of the book especially, the simplicity of the prose and the economy of design created a Cliff's Notes effect, leaving me intrigued but unsatisfied. The ending itself is powerful, and I'm tempted to bump this up to four stars, but with classics I tend to downgrade to correct any "Well, it's taught in high school so it must be good" veneration, and the ratings don't really matter anyway, so whatever.
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