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    Becoming Abigail
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    Becoming Abigail
    Unavailable
    Becoming Abigail
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    Becoming Abigail

    By Chris Abani

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    -Abani's last novel, "GraceLand," was a selection of the TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB, winner of the PEN Hemingway Award, a Silver Medal in the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for several other prizes including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAkashic Books
    Release dateMar 1, 2006
    ISBN9781936070206
    Unavailable
    Becoming Abigail
    Author

    Chris Abani

    Chris Abani is a Nigerian poet and novelist and the author of The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail (a New York Times Editor’s Choice), and GraceLand (a selection of the Today Show Book Club and winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). His other prizes include a PEN Freedom to Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He lives and teaches in California.  

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    Reviews for Becoming Abigail

    4/5

    28 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The saddest story, written about a horrid subject, turns out to be one of the most well-written books of all time. It holds you gripped in it's clutches well after the last pages is turned. The 120-page novella, from Chris Abani, Becoming Abigail haunts me from the first time I read it - it calls from my bookshelves to be read on occasion and I wanted to suggest you download or order it from Amazon today, It will touch your heart for ever. The prose reads like poetry, the descriptions evocative, the ending painful yet you will never forget.
    • 5/5
      Abani's writes beautiful prose with startlingly original imagery. His attention to craft is evident in every line with regard to diction and overall narrative structure. A good thing because writing any less beautiful and precise would lack the nuance to capture a character as complex and tormented as Abigail, locked in her dead mother's shadow and battered by life from one misfortune to the next. We are given a view of her trauma through her traumatized, as unreliable as it is devastating, but it is all the same intoxicating because her voice is molded by an incredible contemporary novelist.
    • 4/5
      Abani's prose is beautiful in Becoming Abigail. A few times I wondered if Abani himself would have edited out some cliches in his writing, if one of his students had turned it in as creative writing, but these were very few compared to the overwhelming prevalence of novel imagery and striking language. The story of the daughter, who tries very hard not to become Abigail, and a girl, who painfully becomes a woman, is mostly disturbing and uncomfortable. Time travel is done well, as the narration switches back and forth between Now and Then, again thanks to Abani's mastery with language. In the end, I felt relieved, rather than sad. And I am left with the striking image of a big toe brushing up against the cheek, and a cut, bleeding.