StaceyHH

A "review" made of non-sequential and probably only personally relevant observations.

I've always dreamed vividly, even my lesser dreams are beyond technicolor, hyperreal. When I wake I can remember, if I take a moment of stillness, sometimes a dozen stories. My dreams are populated by everything I've read, what I've experienced, what I haven't. Maybe this is why I don't feel compelled to watch movies, they seem such a pale imitation. I know it's why I read. Real life is always intense to me, the same multi-textural existence as my dreams but firmly in reality. Real life is pragmatic (and I adore "pragmatic",) solid, and linear. Reading is a waking dream, brilliant, mind expanding, outside of my experience but true.

Sometimes I read a story that lives. I can feel it in my heart and lungs, smell it and taste it, except both and neither. I live in that story, and when I look up from the page, the world looks, for a split second like a slightly faded print, because the page I was living in was as bright and alive as my dreams. When I am that lucky, I don't read a story, I feel it. It's like I can pinch it between my finger tips and make a hole to crawl inside. It's like walking on gravel. It's like talking to crows, running through sprinklers, burning your hands on hot granite, smelling a forest fire.Who Fears Death is a story of "feel." It's an ugly, beautiful, heartbreaking story.

I first learned of Nnedi Okorafor because of her short story African Sunrise. It's another story of "feel," magical and sad and hopeful. Go read it. Then read this book.