The Death of Vivek Oji - Chaos after Tragedy

There's just something about reading a book and when you're done, you take a moment to appreciate the writer's creativity. While my exams lasted, I couldn't read fiction as I would have loved to. Except for one. The day I picked up this book, I had just found out that a course I looked forward to writing was postponed and so, I was miffed. I picked up this book in a state of anger and halfway into it, I realized that I should never have picked up this book in the first place. I'll tell you why.

The Death of Vivek Oji is a 418 paged book written by Akwaeke Emezi. One rowdy afternoon, a mother comes out to see the bloodied body of her son, Vivek wrapped in cloth and placed at their doorstep. Vivek is the only child of his parents. As a child, he suffered from dissociating fugues but no one apart from his high-spirited cousin Osita had any idea about it. Growing up, he was surrounded by the kids born to the foreign wives group, which his mother was part of. Now he's dead. But the circumstances surrounding his death are strange. Who knew him enough to bring his body to the house that day? What happened at the market that day? With the answers come a whole lot more questions but is his mother who is bent on finding answers, ready to find out who the real Vivek is?

Worthy of commendation in this book, and the first thing I'll love to talk about was the suspense/buildup. I read the first chapter and i knew I was in for a ride with this one. The author's ability to take the reader to a high and after just few lines, back to normalcy was amazing. There's this thing authors do where they don't write back stories after particular scenes where they are needed but instead, they write it in a way that the past and the present fit into each other. It's a very sexy thing to do. I love it. Akwaeke Emezi did that and with it, he achieved whatever it was he wanted to acheive, and a whole lot more with this book.

I should never have picked up this book the day I did because mentally, I wasn't ready. Every chapter in this book held its own weight and halfway into the book, I paused to ask myself if I was really doing the right thing since I still had exams few days after. The whole finding out what led to his death, his life few days to his death, his childhood, and life after his death was something I wasn't prepared for. One thing I love about Nigerian books is the drama that always, finds a way to wiggle itself into whatever land the characters exist in. This book didn't even lack in that aspect. With every discovery, came more questions. And with every book based on the death of a person, there's bound to be questions left unanswered. I ventured into this book angrily and at the end, every trace of anger had been replaced with the satisfaction that comes with reading a lovely book.

Each character came with a unique personality and this was not the kind of books where you take sides with some characters and leave the rest. There were times in this book where characters acted out wrongly and the reasons behind their actions didn't make much sense, I think I was able to overlook it because the good surpassed the bad where this book was concerned. This read was a perfect blend of chaos after tragedy. And I enjoyed every bit of it.

Is there anything I would change about this book? The ending. Although satisfying, it was a bit rushed and I would have appreciated depth where the whole truths were uncovered.

The death of Vivek Oji is a book everyone should read at one point or the other in their lives. And personally, books like this deserve more visibility than they currently have and I feel the target audience should mostly be African parents. I'll rate the book a clean 9/10. I enjoyed this particular work of Akwaeke Emezi and I look forward to exploring other works to his name.

If you're looking for a gripping Nigerian read, then this is a book I'll recommend to you. Like I said, it is a must read for everyone. Adults, youths, Africans and Non-africans alike, this is a must read for everyone. Do check this one out.

Thanks for reading.

Image is a screenshot from my e-library.

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