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Purple Hibiscus
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Emily Whitchurch

Debut novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie makes words work in this deceptively insightful novel. Her descriptive passages conjure up a sensual, nostalgic portrait of Nigeria in a time of cultural and political change.

Through the eyes of fifteen year-old Kambili, notions of freedom and religion are gently explored. We travel at child's pace through sexual and political awakening, as they matter to her. But the novel goes beyond a simple coming-of-age story by realising the wider social and cultural events that reflect and inform this experience. Kambili must navigate her way through a complex of confusing and contradictory symbols just as Nigeria itself searches for unity amidst external imposition and internal unrest.

Kambili, her older brother Jaja and their mother live under the rule of their father, Eugene, a staunch Catholic and 'omelora' or 'Big Man' in their town, who instils authority in his household with a clenched fist and a leather-bound bible. He owns factories that sell fruit drinks, packaging an idea of Africa for the West.

Slowly, forces come into the children's lives that challenge their understanding of both their father's brand of discipline and their own ideas of freedom. They visit their Aunty Ifeoma, Papa's sister, who lives a modest yet more fulfilling life in Nsukka with her three children. As a widow, Ifeoma brings up her children alone, yet the family is happy, noisy and outspoken. Here in Nsukka Kambili also meets the young Father Amadi, who offers a different interpretation of her father's religion, intermingled with a sexuality that Kambili finds irresistible and terrifying at the same time.

Language mirrors this cultural interchange. At first, Igbo words - forbidden by Papa - mix uncomfortably with standard English, reflecting the speech of Kambili, who is little more than a mute in her father's house. By the last section of the book, however, the narrator and the reader have become used to the Nigerian tongue and, without understanding all the words, the sounds feel right.

As a narrator Kambili is a triumph. A la mode, Adichie chose a child to narrate her story, believing an adult narrator might have appeared 'too knowing'. Putting aside the inherent difficulties in writing 'as a child', Adichie masters the language and style of her central character beautifully. Forbidden to speak or think freely, Kambili's inner world is made up of colourful, sensual, child-like observations. When her father smiles, for example, she delights in his face 'breaking open like a coconut with the brilliant white meat inside'. She doesn't labour to attach complicated meanings and judgements, avoiding overtly reflective passages, and the novel shines the brighter for this. In place of crude analysis, Kambili's observations show the raw reality of growing up in, and growing out of, a proud country in a state of flux. Kambili's naivety is purposefully frustrating, forcing the reader to disseminate the book's messages through their own interpretation of her simplistic observations.

Although the narrator's ignorance can be charming (when government intrusion forces The Standard to publish underground, she imagines a 'dark, damp room…men bent over their desks, writing the truth'), Kambili isn't merely the victim of this novel. Adichie allows her character depth by showing other consequences of enforced 'innocence', and at times Kambili's naivety spills into self-righteousness. When the girls at school call her a 'backyard snob', they are only half-wrong. Although her piety is learnt from her father, it is Kambili's responsibility to change. She must confront her own sexuality and accept autonomy in an environment that sees these as problematic. As much as Kambili is stifled by her father, she also relies on his rules to order her life. They prevent her from confronting her own changing body and the responsibility of forming a voice of her own, as her cousins do.

It would be all too easy for this novel to polarise two views: Africans against their oppressors, Father Eugene against Father Amadi, Catholic strictures from the West against traditional tribal codes. But Adichie is careful to show the grey areas, most powerfully through the character of Papa. He is not just a brutal disciplinarian; he can also be a loving father. Kambili and her brother cherish the 'love sips' he allows them from his teacup. At the same time, Mama's best china is smashed in one of his furies. Papa can be a religious zealot, scalding his children's feet with boiling water to show them what happens when they 'walk in sin'. Yet he also believes in a 'renewed democracy' for Nigeria and opposes the corruption of the military government, using his paper The Standard as a mouthpiece for dissent. Aunty Ifoema herself admits, 'it is the only paper that tells the truth'.

Of course, Eugene can't see that his own household is a microcosm of the regime he opposes, caught himself between accepting wholesale the values and religion of the white man and justifying his own sense of national pride. He cannot embrace his ancestry, of which his traditionalist father is a constant reminder, because those were 'pagan' times. Yet, labouring to be 'more like the white people' is unsettling for a man who still sees his place at the head of his tribe.

Readers are also made to examine our reactions to oppression. The scenes at the family home are compelling, laced with suspense as the reader anticipates, perhaps even hopes for, another chilling attack from Papa. Achidie's novel recognises that there is something fascinating about a tyrant; something perversely moreish about observing the way his victims justify his actions, paralysed by a mixture of fear and respect. When villagers speak about her father's achievements Kambili glows with pride and wants to tell them that he is her father. Even as she waits to receive a punishment, Kambili looks at his eyes, 'deep and sad' and wishes she could 'touch his face' and 'run [her] hand over his rubbery cheeks'. And as Eugene methodically pours boiling water over each of his children's feet, he cries and tells them they are 'precious'. Adichie recognises the notional value of freedom in a volatile environment where sometimes we'd prefer to be ruled.

Purple Hibiscus falters slightly at the close. In particular, the lack of attention to Jaja's character, underdeveloped throughout the novel, deducts from Adichie's smart final twist. Not punchy enough for a Booker winner perhaps, but a successful debut all the same, full of rich, original imagery lit up from within by a distinctive female lead.