PURPLE HIBISCUS by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Kambili is a teenage girl growing up in Nigeria, but this book is not so much a novel about Nigeria as it is about an abusive childhood.  Kambili’s family is extremely wealthy, but her “Christian” father is vicious and physically abusive toward Kambili, her brother Jaja, and their mother.  The brutality that Kambili and Jaja suffer at the hands of their devout father is almost too disturbing to read.  He also does not allow any family contact with his father whose traditional ways he considers heathen.  He finally allows Kambili and Jaja to spend a week with their Aunty Ifeoma and her three children, who do not enjoy the affluent lifestyle to which Kambili and Jaja are accustomed.  Aunty’s problem is not so much lack of money as it is scarcity of resources, such as fuel for the car, electricity for her home, and drinking water in the area where she lives.  However, the freedom and joy in Aunty Ifeoma’s household is an improvement that Jaja embraces, while Kambili struggles to overcome the guilt and fear she feels from betraying her father’s strict rules.  Her father is a study in contrasts, lending numerous points of irony to this novel.  For one thing, he is enormously generous with his money despite being a nasty taskmaster and stingy with real affection.  Another irony is that he expects Kambili and her brother to be first in their class, but their real education takes place at Aunty Ifeoma’s, where they find out how constrained their lives really are.  Finally, although Kambili’s father strikes down the least insubordination on the part of his children with cruel punishment, he publishes a newspaper that routinely criticizes the Nigerian government.  I never figured out if he was just basically mean or if his violent temper sometimes got the better of him.