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Comment: All profits go to Housing Works -- NYC's largest HIV/AIDS organization. Minimal wear to cover. Pages clean and binding tight. Paperback.

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The Memory of Love Paperback – September 13, 2011

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Aminatta Forna (Author)
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4.2 out of 5 stars 48 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Grove Press; Reprint edition (September 13, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 080214568X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0802145680
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #301,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars"The harder they come, the harder they fall."
By "switterbug" Betsey Van Horn TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on February 9, 2011
Format: Hardcover
Incalculable grief cleaves to profound love in this elaborate, helical tapestry of a besieged people in postwar Freetown, Sierra Leone. Interlacing two primary periods of violent upheaval, author Aminatta Forna renders a scarred nation of people with astonishing grace and poise--an unforgettable portrait of open wounds and closed mouths, of broken hearts and fractured spirits, woven into a stunning evocation of recurrence and redemption, loss and tender reconciliation. Forna mines a filament of hope from resigned fatalism, from the devastation of a civil war that claimed 50,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people. Those that survived felt hollowed out, living with an uneasy peace.

Over 99% of people suffered from unrelieved post-traumatic stress disorder, and those that survived often hid shameful secrets of forced betrayal. Here you have children, now adults, trying to cope after their brutal coercion with rebel soldiers. They are living with the aftermath of "nothing left to lose." If you can imagine an unspeakable atrocity, it was likely executed. Blood on the hands of the people who remain seep into the pores of the newly arrived.

Three principal characters form the locus of this story--a psychologist, a surgeon, and an academic. The story goes through seamless temporal shifts--from 1969, a period of unrest following a military coup--to 2001, following ten years of civil war begun in 1991.

Adrian Lockheart is a British psychologist on sabbatical from his failing marriage to accept a (second) post in Freetown. He is compassionate and dogged in his pursuit to treat the population of mentally disturbed and traumatized citizens, to help them find hope and resolve, yet he feels emotionally dislocated from his own family at home.Read more ›
30 Comments 24 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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4.0 out of 5 starsRecommended but with some reservations
By sb-lynn TOP 500 REVIEWER on March 31, 2011
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Brief summary and review, no spoilers.

This story takes place in the African nation of Sierra Leone and takes place over a period of time starting in the late 1960's. One of the main characters is Elias Cole, an ambitious British professor who strives to become both published and respected. He finds himself friends of sorts with a man named Julius - also a fellow professor who is both popular with his students has a beautiful wife named Saffia. Elias becomes obsessed with Saffia at first sight, and his jealousy and mixed in with some affection for Julius become a central part of the story.

The other main characters in this novel are a British man named Adrian who has come to Sierra Leone to work as a psychologist in a local hospital. Adrian is married and has a child still in England, but he is obviously dissatisfied with his work there and with his marriage, and feels the need to matter and feel some passion about what he does. The other central figure in this story is a native born doctor named Kai Manseray, who is an extremely bright and dedicated surgeon. Kei and Adrian become friends, when Kei starts staying at Adrian's home on occasions to sleep and make meals.

The chapters alternate and we go back and forth in time, with alternating narrators and stories. We are taken through these incredibly turbulent and disturbing years in Sierra Leone, with all its violence and horror suffered by the people due to war and government instability. In fact at one point Adrian is told that most everyone in the country has post-traumatic stress syndrome - and their mental hospitals are filled with many such damaged individuals.

More than just a story about these characters, this is also a story about Sierra Leone.Read more ›
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3.0 out of 5 starsThe Fragmentation of Conscience
By Robin Friedman HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on June 2, 2011
Format: Hardcover
Late in Aminatta Forma's long novel, "The Memory of Love" (2010) a British psychologist, Adrian Lockheart, reflects on his extended series of meetings with a dying political scientist, Elias Cole. Deeply troubled near the end of his life, Cole has been meeting with Lockheart as a form of expiation for feelings of loss and feelings of guilt. Lockheart observes that Cole suffers from "fragmentation of conscience" (p. 410), a condition which seems to indicate an unwillingness to accept the consequences of one's action or inaction. In a brief acknowledgement section following the novel, Forma attributes the phrase "fragmentation of conscience" to a book by M Scott Peck, called "People of the Lie." Forma quotes Peck: "The plain fact of the matter is that any group will remain potentially conscienceless and evil until such time as each and every individual holds himself or herself directly responsible for the behaviour of the whole group -- the organism -- of which he or she is part. We have not yet begun to arrive at that point."

Peck's and Forma's understanding of the "fragmentation of conscience" form much of the theme of this serious and ambitious novel, set the the West African nation of Sierra Leone in 2001 following a long, brutal civil war. Cole and Lockheart are two of the three major characters of the novel. Cole speaks in the first person throughout the novel as he tells his story to Lockheart. Cole's story goes back to 1969, with the beginning of strife in his native Sierra Leone. Cole falls in love with a woman named Saffia, the wife of an engineer and colleague, Julius. Cole recounts the story of his love for Saffia which becomes intertwined with political unrest, Cole's arrest, and his subsequent role in betraying Julius.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsThis is done with great care for details and a constant yearning for...

Ms. Forna interweaves a horrific time in history of Sierra Leone with characters struggling through the deep long term effects on their lives. Read more

Published 6 days ago by Jennifer Dohrn
3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

Found it hard to get into and sort out the characters, but I found it interesting.

Published 5 months ago by Karina Manning
5.0 out of 5 starsI enjoyed it.

I learned a lot from this book. The description of the impact of colonization was powerful - the resilience of a people vs. the 'white man's burden' was well addressed. Read more

Published 5 months ago by L. Davis, Massachusetts
5.0 out of 5 starsa rich, complex narrative that spans 40 years of Sierra Leonean...

Aminatta Forna has woven a rich, complex narrative that spans the last 40 years of Sierra Leone's history. Read more

Published 6 months ago by David Evans
1.0 out of 5 starsOne Star

Not read

Published 7 months ago by Yvonne Spaulding
3.0 out of 5 starsVery long with some unnecessary story lines Where are the editors

Very long with some unnecessary story lines Where are the editors? If you are interested in this part of Africa, you would like that aspect of the book, but otherwise too much... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Constance C.
4.0 out of 5 starsVery interesting read

A peak at life in Sierra Leone pre and post war. My country still has a long way to go!

Published 10 months ago by Jenny Sandy
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Excellent story dealing with the complexities of love

Published 10 months ago by Lisa Lunetta
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Brilliant work, slow-paced at times but altogether an achievement

Published 11 months ago by Ruwadzano Muzwidzwa
5.0 out of 5 starsThis is a beautiful, mesmerizing story weaving the fateful tides of...

This is a beautiful, mesmerizing story weaving the fateful tides of romantic love on a loom of civil strife, political repression and violence. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Carole Sue Taylor

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