NICOLE TRESKA interviews TRACY O’NEILL
It’s a drizzly summer night, and I’m meeting Tracy O’Neill in Manhattan’s East Village to talk about her debut novel, The Hopeful, the story of a figure skater who breaks her back on the cusp of Olympic competition. O’Neill skated as a child, and in her pearl raincoat, cinched at the waist and hooded, it’s not hard to imagine a younger Tracy, her hooded warm-up hiding a sequined costume, awaiting her moment on the ice.
Book by DINAW MENGESTU
Reviewed by
In All Our Names, the Ethiopian-born novelist Dinaw Mengestu tells the story of two Isaacs and a Helen living, loving, and leaving each other—apparently in the 1970s. The story, which takes place in both Uganda, and a generic Midwestern U.S. town called Laurel, is narrated partly by Isaac, whose real name isn’t really Isaac (he is also called Langston, Professor, and Dickens at different times and by different people), and partly by Helen, the American social worker assigned to him after he comes to the U.S. to study at university.
The novel begins with the faux Isaac, almost twenty-five, leaving his village in Ethiopia for the Ugandan capital of Kampala, to “claim his share,” i.e. to become a famous writer, surrounded by like-minded men. There, he meets the other Isaac (whom we’ll call Isaac [2] for clarity) at the university, though neither Isaac is a student, and it is unclear whether the two men are like-minded. Their relationship and involvement with the revolution against Idi Amin makes up Isaac’s share of the narrative.
Book by CHINELO OKPARANTA
Reviewed by
Happiness, Like Water is both an apt and a paradoxical title for Chinelo Okparanta’s debut collection. In these ten stories which deal primarily in the domestic, happiness is indeed essential and elusive, but it is neither clear nor cleansing. Many of the characters can only be happy at someone else’s expense: mothers who pressure their daughters to marry rich men or barren women who prey on pregnant ones, for example.
Okparanta dedicates the book to home. Home is the center of these stories, and whether in Nigeria or the U.S., it has the power to haunt. The protagonists are Nigerian women who find themselves on the edge of some great rift. Okparanta explores their descents, surrenders, and occasional elation using quiet language and unadorned structures. Her interior focus makes the high drama of midnight robberies, murderous “old maids,” and a virgin turned escort feel commonplace in comparison with the unyielding pressure, internal and external, facing these characters.
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