13 Sierra  Leone – The memory of love – Aminatta Forna, July 2014 (Score 8.25)

This story, or rather these stories are interlocking, being set in two time periods with continuity of some of the characters between the periods. As it opens, Elias Cole is telling his story while Adrian Lockheart is listening to him. Elias is in a psychiatric ward. Adrian is a psychologist.

Most of the events occur in and around Freetown before, during and after episodes of the ongoing civil war and rebellion.

Vanessa is/was the mistress of Elias Cole. He is clearly taking her for granted, only using her for sexual gratification. Husband and wife couple Julius and Saffia are major characters in the earlier time, though both reverberate into the later.

On page 71 we find Elias and the Dean of his faculty drinking from the mouth of soft drink bottles. They are putting themselves seriously at risk from contacting the deadly Weil’s disease. This is caused by the constant dribbling of rats and mice. As medics they should know better, particularly living where rats are endemic.

Elias wants to start a relationship with Saffia, and engineers a number of “accidental” meetings. He is chancing his arm. It is, though, difficult to be sure if Julius suspects.

Kai, a colleague of Adrian, is an excellent surgeon, but eventually applies for a visa for the United States. That clearly means that, one day, his skills will no longer be available for the benefit of the people in Sierra Leone who really need them. This is a major dilemma throughout the world when skilled people migrate to improve their own lives, skills, opportunities and safety.

The intermingling of the main strands, and the subsidiary strands with the main story and their own, provides us with a complex, fascinating story. I won’t say any more about the events other than to say that I hope the young child at the end of the story is Mamakay’s daughter. You will have to read the book to find out who Mamakay is, and who the father might be.

I scored the book at 8.5.