How do you counsel a nation? [ "The Memory of Love" is a towering tale of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, superbly realised and beautifully written, horrifying and exhilarating, unflinching and tender, moving and uplifting. "If West Africa has lived through some of the most grotesque episodes of the 20th century, it has also been blessed with several generations of extraordinary writing talents who continue to turn those ordeals into heart-rending literature." She threads her stories like music, imperceptibly into the reader's consciousness. But if you're looking for some light summer fare, go elsewhere. Forna is a writer of great talent who does not shy from tackling the toughest questions about why humans do the things they do: from the smallest act of betrayal to the greatest acts of love'” –  Read 503 reviews from the world's largest community for readers.


"Forna's intense research into surgery and psychiatry is as lightly worn as her ability to hide her own craft as a writer. Powerful.

We spend a lot of time with Elias Cole, especially at the beginning, with his flat banality of evil and his not very interesting love story. It is wonderfully written. Click the link for more You know how some people fall in love and it is as if they're You know how some people fall in love and it is as if they're I can tell I've finished a moving book when I sit at dinner and explain detail after detail of the book to my non-reading husband, and then HE starts asking about it. Though the first quarter of the book didn't do much for me. "Aminatta Forna's novel is intelligent, engrossing and beautifully crafted." "Forna's characters weave in and out of each other's lives, often with entirely unforeseeable and shocking consequences. Reading the reviews on a lot of other books I've read about romance under horrific circumstances, the main criticism seems to be that they are over sensationalised and use cheap tricks to pull at our heartstrings. Arriving in Freetown in the wake of civil war, he struggles with the intensity of the heat, dirt and dust, and with the secrets this country hides. However, I did not like this book. I was given this book several years ago by a gentleman I know with an incredibly exciting job that involves lots of travel, eye-watering anecdotes over dinner and, er, a legitimate favourite Somalian pirate that he knows on first name terms. With whom can the reader most easily identify? It sat on my shelf for a long time because I am rubbish, and reading about war zones is more difficult for me these days than it used to be. Elsewhere in the hospital lies a dying man who was young during the country’s turbulent postcolonial years and has stories to tell that are far from heroic. This novel opens quietly, as if the writer were a doctor, cautiously revealing a wound, warning the reader to look, but don’t touch; as if she were a psychiatrist, probing delicately at the mind, but who avoids coming too close to the main issues, for fear of doing her patient greater harm. He meets Kai Mansaray, an orthopedic surgeon born and raised in Sierra Leone. Elias Cole lies in a hospital bed dying. Those that survived felt hollowed out, living with an uneasy peace.The author of this infelicitously named novel lives in London and was born in Scotland, the daughter of a Scottish mother and Sierra Leonean father who was involved in politics in his native country, ultimately losing his life as a political dissident. All three lives will collide in a story about friendship, love, war, about understanding the indelible effects of the past and the nature of obsessive love. This past month (early 2016), I have read two books, each by a Neustadt winner or nominee, which sent me scrambling to find that quotation. Do you think he would return to West Africa to claim what is rightfully / legally his? The story opens with the first person narrative of Elias Cole, an elderly academic who is telling his story to psychiatric, Adrian Lockheart. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.

It took me exactly 1 month to read the 450 pages. It's a book that you can't read quickly." "Forna [assembles] her character with the patience and vision of a chess master, and soon they are locked in an inexorable collision of good and evil and past and present, until we read on hurriedly to see if they will be left with hope."