Review: Transcendent Kingdom

Transcendent Kingdom

by Yaa Gyasi

Alfred A. Knopf, 2020

Adult Contemporary Literary Fiction

Summary: Gifty is a neuroscience student working on a behavioral experiment with mice. Her mom, who suffers with depression, is staying with her as she finishes up the last pieces and writes the paper. Gifty also reflects on her childhood, growing up in Alabama. She also thinks about her brother Nana’s addiction and death.

Likes: Once again, this book hits hard, tough subjects and experiences are a big part of Gifty’s childhood, but it also offers hope. I also find Gyasi’s prose to be simple elegance. There were multiple ideas I could relate to. Sometimes specifically and other times more generally, such as loneliness causing us sometimes to try and make circumstances even more lonely for ourselves. There are also the conflicts with reconciling science and religion. Plus Gifty uses her journal to help her process things.

Dislikes: The deckled edges. They are meant to make the book more fancy but they make it harder to turn the pages.

Overall I wanted to read this because of how much I liked Homegoing. Now that I’ve read it, I’ll read anything this author chooses to publish. I don’t know if this will happen but I’d love to see fantasy or scifi from them too.