Title: Scatterlings *
Author: Resoketswe Manenzhe
Rating: 3.75 stars / 5 stars
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Favorite Quote: “I, on the other hand, can’t say my people came from this place or that one. I only know that they likely descended from West Africa. But West Africa is massive, so massive, in fact, that when European nations met in Berlin to divide its resources, over a dozen new countries were cut into its face.” Resoketswe Manenzhe. Scatterlings. HarperVia, 2022, e-book ed.
Review: Thank you to the NetGalley platform and the publisher, HarperVia, for the free e-ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (my favorite dictionary, by far), a scatterling is “[a] wandering or vagabond person; a vagrant.” “scatterlings.” Oed.com, 2024 (17 Aug 2024).
It’s interesting, and impressive, when an entire novel can so masterfully be captured in all its multitudes in a single-word title. Scatterlings. This book contains nothing but - a daughter torn from her home, transplanted to England, who flees England and on a mission to find her home again she becomes first a wife and then a mother, never finding the place that is hers. And, upon her death (TW: suicide), her daughter and husband begin their own pilgrimage, forced from their home by the anti-miscegenation laws - Cape Town’s Immorality Act of the 1920s.
And that is just what this novel offers on the surface. Vibrating just beneath the novel’s most external layer, there are countless stories of displacement - of shifting places, physical and metaphysical. And at its core is Dido, a young child forced to flee her home after the Immorality Act and her mother’s suicide and her sister’s death.
Aside from its striking narrative, this novel’s structure is also fascinating and also lends itself to the ever-moving characteristic of the novel. First there is the relatively standard narrative form - the novel opens with Bram hearing more about the Immorality Act and the events that occur as time unfolds.
But then, following her death, Alisa’s story is told through journal entries and other snippets from her perspective.
And then there’s Dido, learning about the world as she is forced to flee, forced to dress as a boy, and forced to walk away from the land and the house where she lived with her mother and her sister.
So, both narrative and structure mirror one another in the ever-moving, often chaotic moments that collide throughout the book.
The aspect of this book that isn’t working - or just isn’t working as well as the rest of it - is the ending. The ending is dark, and mysterious, and leaves questions. This is something that happens throughout the rest of the novel, quite successfully. The problem with the ending is that it’s just a bit too obscure, such that it’s too unclear why it’s ending where it is.
About that Quote: At its core, this book is about racism and colonialism and the devastating effects of each on individuals, on families, and on entire cultures. And this quote ties those themes to the metaphor that explores the theme - that of the scatterling. This quote shows, with physical clarity, the damage of colonization - the effects of it being literally carved into the face of Africa - but so too does this quote show displacement, a constant thread throughout the narrative.
Have you read Scatterlings? Share your thoughts below!
(Incomplete) list of TWs for Scatterlings: Su*cide, Racism, Child De*th, SA (at least implied)
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