Half of a Yellow Sun

Another 4 stars book, I seem to be choosing some good books which I am enjoying and well written. This book has been around since 2006 and it hauting, harring and down right scary. There are some quite crude descriptions, emotional hard hardhitting, I had no idea they would be in the book, not that I am complaining, after all the book is about a civil war. Of all the main characters, my favourite is Ugwu he was always so loyal to his master. I didn’t like the idea that the Olanna and Odenigbo didn’t name their child, only called her Baby. There was great descriptions, the details of the country, people and the war. Having no idea about the country and location of the cities described in the book, I found it difficult to visualize the distances and locations, I checked out maps online to give me an idea. I decided to go the extra and watch the film, I found the film a little glorified, there wasn’t the brutal descriptions (obviously, it is a film) but there wasn’t anything that really showed how brutal a civil war actually is.

Half of a Yellow Sun is a good story set against the backdrop of a civil war that is unknown (or forgotten) to most of the western world. The characters are all well developed and well written - the reader becomes invested in their story and their development over the course of the book. But I also found the characters a bit too contrived. Each had their counterpart: black versus white, rich versus poor, academic versus uneducated, even beautiful versus plain. It made the story seem too constructed, in my opinion. Still, overall it was a good book.