SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell: https://t.co/wookv6qTRu Short Review: 8.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) August 19, 2019

Short Review (cont): More Historical Fiction than SF until the end, The Old Drift follows three families through 3 generations in 20th-21st century Zambia as they each search for ways forward for themselves. Longwinded but fascinating throughout, if sometimes rough to read (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) August 19, 2019

The Old Drift is a book that may not quite fit in the categories of SciFi or Fantasy - the book is for the most part historical fiction, until its final section at least.*  Which is not a negative mind you - historical fiction is great and often fascinating when done well, but just the reader should know what they're getting into with this book.  As with many books in the historical fiction genre, it follows a group of fantasies in a common place throughout several (3 in this case) generations, as events proceed, with the families becoming more intertwined with each other and the setting as time moves on.  Of course, the setting in this case is Zambia, which is very likely unfamiliar to western audiences, including myself.

*There are some elements of magical realism before the final act, but attaching a "fantasy" label to those first two acts would still be off, to the extent that any label matters.

And The Old Drift is fascinating throughout as its story is told from generation to generation.  The book is less linear than you would expect: rather than telling the story of one generation, moving to the next, and then the next, the story sometimes cuts back and forth, with older characters regaining prominence on occasion even hundreds of pages after seemingly being out of the picture.   But this story of members of three families from diverse heritages - Black (from Zambia or elsewhere in Africa), White (English or Italian), Indian and mixes of all three - never really becomes confusing due to how well its written and its characters are frequently fascinating through it all.  And the conclusion brings it all back to the beginning in a way that works pretty well.  The book's not perfect - the book is very willing to go on tangents and is very very traumatic in times to its characters - but it's worth a read.


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
This story, a tale set in what is now Zambia but was once yet another area of Africa the British attempted to colonize, begins with the fevered acts of a White explorer, ignorant of all that was around him.  His actions however set the course of history for the land in ways he could never have anticipated - and that history would be seen, felt, and occasionally made by the descendants of three families.

The first family would be from a pair of Italians, including a woman whose body grew hair all over and an incredible rate, who would move to the area to avoid the consequences of a murder and fall apart when the man couldn't understand what his wife saw in the local African people.

The second family would come from the marriage of a blind Englishwoman to an African scholar, who fled England when her family rejected them only for the woman to discover causes and people she had never thought of before.

The third family would come from an African woman, an intellectual prodigy, who would get caught up in the revolutionary movement of a local man, and become known across the world as Zambia's first attempt as an Astronaut (an "Afronaut"), only to find herself abandoned by all those she trusted.

These women, and their descendants, through two generations, would search for their way in this strange and developing land, a land coveted by foreigners around the world, and as the generations move on, they will search for a way for themselves, not for others.  A way seen only by the bzzzzzz of beings small and numerous, who observed it all as it happened....
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The above plot summary is a bit of a mess, because it's hard to describe the events in The Old Drift without spoiling things to the point where a prospective reader will want to skip ahead to parts of the journey they know to be coming - I myself was kind of spoiled to knowing there was a certain plot point in the final arc, but thankfully that spoiler wasn't very specific so I was able to control my : impatience.  Which is not to say the journeys of each of the nine major characters is particularly fun to read (more on this later) - but the journeys are fascinating in themselves and are worth reading even if you have been spoiled.  I should mention that those journey aren't as linear as you'd expect - especially as you get into later generations, the book will jump back in time as it switches viewpoints within a generation and will sometimes switch points of view back to those of older characters.  The stories of the earlier generations are never necessarily done just because we've passed on to their children.

Oh and in between perspective shifts there are often interludes from a greek chorus of what seem to be mosquitoes, observing each event as it occurs and offering some odd commentary, commentary that becomes a little clearer at the end.

I seem to say this a lot but it's true - this whole thing could've been a mess in a weaker author's hands, but Serpeli manages to make this work and never really be confusing, with the occasional jumps in time being easy for the reader to get over.  And the characters' journeys are excellently written, with the characters coming from very different backgrounds - English, Italian, Indian, Zambian, etc. - and those backgrounds affecting who they are and who they become as they grow and change.  These journeys are not always easy to read - the first four segments could easily be titled "Men are awful to Women" and by the fourth of those segments I was near quitting the book because of how miserable it felt, but none of the miserable points* are gratuitous and there are enough moments of lightness and meaning to make it all worthwhile.

*Trigger Warning: One character is molested by her father figure as a teen before running away to make money selling her body.  There's no outright rape at least of any of the characters.*

It all comes together in the end, in the final generation, to see the grandchildren of our initial characters coming together to change the nation, and finding themselves swept along the tide in ways even they couldn't have expected, ways that make a fitting ending to it all.  I'm not saying the journeys to getting to these endings are perfect - this book is long, and there are substantial bits that probably weren't necessary - but it all winds up working really well in the end, as Serpeli takes real life historical characters and twists them into the story alongside her fictional and speculative ones, to tell this tale of Zambia born and growing despite the interference of others.