Ancestor Stones: A Novel [Hardcover]

Aminatta Forna (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 14, 2006

The author of the rapturously acclaimed memoir The Devil That Danced on the Water seamlessly turns her hand to fiction and delivers a novel that is a lush and beautiful portrait of several generations of African women. In Ancestor Stones, a young woman from West Africa, who has lived in England for many years, returns after years of civil war. The family's coffee plantation has been placed in her hands, and she turns to her aunts—women who were mysterious and a bit intimidating to her younger self—who begin to tell their stories.  They are timeless tales of rivalrous co-wives, patriarchal society, and old religions challenged by Islamic and Christian incursions; they are modern stories of European-owned mining companies, the repressive influence of mission schools, corrupt elections, and the postcolonial African elite. Through their voices a family history interwoven with the history of a country emerges—one of a society both ancient and modern, of a family of strong women refusing to live as second-class citizens. Powerful and sensuously written, Ancestor Stones is a wonderful achievement that recalls The God of Small Things and The Joy Luck Club, and establishes Forna as a gifted novelist.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Acclaimed memoirist Forna (The Devil That Danced on the Water) glides into fiction with this sweeping portrayal of the lives of five Sierra Leonean women. Abie—a young woman born and raised in Sierra Leone, who now lives in London with her Portuguese-Scottish husband and their children—receives a letter from her aunts informing her they're bequeathing her the family coffee plantation. When Abie returns, her aunts offer her another gift: their stories. A native of Sierra Leone, Forna unpacks Abie's family history (and that of Sierra Leone) using the alternating points of view of Abie's four aunts—Asana, Mary, Hawa and Serah. Asana outlives two husbands and eventually opens her own store, "relinquishing the birthright of womanhood in exchange for the liberty of a man." Mary addresses the changes brought to Africa by the Europeans (prominent among them, the mirror she uses to examine her disfigured face). Hawa trades her gold earrings for bus fare in order to see the sea just once in her life. And Serah opens a voting station during corrupt national elections. Though it's a stretch to call this a novel (each chapter is a self-contained story), Forna's work sheds light on the history of a long-struggling nation. (Sept.)
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From The New Yorker

Forna's first book was an unflinching account of her childhood in Sierra Leone and her investigation into the death of her dissident father. Here, in her debut novel, the setting is an unnamed African country that passes, in a single generation, from village life - "an order in which everybody had their place" - to colonialism and civil war. The story is told in the voices of four women, daughters of different wives of the same father. More archetypes than characters, they come to life only in flashes of color: one is schooled by nuns, her baptism paid for by the "Pagan-Baby Project"; another grows fascinated with the colonials' skin, which "tore like old cotton." Forna's strength is in invoking the menace in daily life under a corrupt regime. On election day, people are so frightened by soldiers that no one walks the streets except the lunatics, "dazed and smiling, unexpected lords of the city."
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (August 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871139448
• ISBN-13: 978-0871139443
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,188,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully rendered, October 9, 2006

By 

Q (Portland, ME United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ancestor Stones: A Novel (Hardcover)

A beautifully rendered novel, reminiscent in some ways of Andrea Levy's Small Island which won a few prestigious awards a few years ago. The scope here of Aminatta Forna's novel, though, is slightly larger, representing a range of women's voices, their individual life-stories often clamoring with one another to form a rich, mosaic depicting the various fates of a community of African women living through social and political changes. While the novel focuses on the women's personal stories, it does not by any means insulate itself from the ever-encroaching social, political and historical pressures exerted by Western imperialism, colonialism, as well as independence and the ensuing civil war.

Since Publishers Weekly and the Booklist provide a summary of the novel above, I won't repeat it here, but I would say that I disagree with Publishers' comment--that the novel here is really a collection of linked stories--because that is simply untrue. While each chapter is a first-person narration of one woman's story, they are not self-contained; they are simply not structured that way, and as a casual and critical reader of linked stories, I would say that, experientially, it doesn't read like that either. Moreover, to see this text as linked stories instead of a novel is perhaps to miss what I think is one of the novel's fundamental points: that these stories are inseparable from one another, the multiple voices not only building on each other, but also proving to be indispensible to the telling of this continuing collective history--or perhaps herstory--of Sierra Leone.

I would also contest the comparison the jacket cover makes between this book and Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. One of the many things I appreciated about this novel is precisely that it resists overly sentimentalized and/or utopian depictions of this community of women. To be sure, the novel dramatizes the struggles and defiance of women living under Sierra Leone's patriarchal culture, this novel does not devolve into tear-jerking melodrama, or reduce the problems to patriarchal oppression alone. Instead, it offers a range of subtle (and not-so-subtle, though never didactic) critques of not just African patriarchal culture and its practices, but also of the many guises of Western colonialism and its legacies, as well as of the power inequalities, struggles and hypocrisies among the women themselves, who, in many and various ways, contribute to the social and political problems addressed.

Overall, Ancestor Stones is a good, substantial, fluid read, the writing lyrical, but not overly so, with plenty of narrative tension, as well as critical complexities that challenge Western assumptions about Africa and African women, sometimes holding up a proverbial mirror to reflect back images of the West and Western attitudes towards African people. I would give this a 4.5, but since that's not an option, I've chosen to give it a 5 instead of a 4. Well worth the read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read it to make them live on!, March 23, 2007

By 

Isabelle Rzehulka "Isabelle Rzehulka" (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ancestor Stones: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is a fine example of how crucial a front cover can be for grabbing readers' attention. I, too, was attracted to "Ancestor Stones" by the colorful letters and graceful cover composition (Atlantic Monthly Press edition) in the first place. Rest assured, the promise made was kept!

I value novels that weave facts into the storyline and thus give me a better understanding of different cultures and mindsets. Along with the women's many personal triumphs and tragedies I learned a lot about the country's (assumed to be Sierra Leone) history, customs, social and cultural changes and, sadly, intense political upheaval. Ms Forna's beautifully crafted prose made me marvel at bygone village-life in serene, Eden-like surroundings, while later on I almost choked on the atrocities of civil war. Of course, given her writing talent she never needs to get graphic.

I don't give a full five stars because the book felt a little bit overconstructed with its prologue, epilogue and the four individually themed blocks that bind the chapters together. In addition, the chapters don't carry on the life-stories where they left off in the previous chapter. To know what had happened in between would have been interesting on the one hand and helpful on the other. I often needed to turn back the pages to remind me of the particular history of a protagonist.

However, I don't consider this a flaw. One just doesn't have to comprise this book as four comprehensive biographies, but rather pivotal periods in each woman's life, each opening a window into their world and times. In the end, I felt both uplifted and humbled by their courage and resilience to all kinds of adversity.

I will definitely get Ms Forna's memoir and hope that she will soon publish her next book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amahzing Book, August 1, 2008

By 

Barry C. Schwaab "cdguyca" (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ancestor Stones (Paperback)

As a guy, I first read the back cover review of the book, and said "chick book". But I gave it a chance. How wrong I was. It's an incredible 'recollection' of life in Africa through the 1900s, as told by the women of different generations who relate their stories.

This is all a revelation to me - how would a white boy living in the US have any clue to what daily life was like then and there?

But, it turns out to be absolutely fascinating. The author creates her stories 'visually' extremely well - you feel like you're right there, observing the scene or event that's being described. Highly recommended!