"Love, marriage, motherhood, family obligations and selfhood — this moving portrait of a marriage moves between London and Ghana to present an extraordinary story of a couple’s intertwined lives."
Prefaced by a Ghanaian proverb: “Marriage is like a groundnut. You have to crack them to see what is inside”, Krystle Zara Appiah’s Rootless is a moving, unexpected love story set between London and Ghana. With a gripping structure that starts near the end before switching to a couple’s origin story and moving forward at increasingly feverish pace, it’s a fine page-turner of a debut with a heart-stopping climax.
The story begins just as Efe has gone to Ghana, leaving her husband Sam with their toddler daughter. Then we’re transported back nineteen years to 1997, when Efe and her sister arrive in London from Ghana to finish their schooling, and to the moment Efe first meets Sam. After finishing school, he reads law at Cambridge, while Efe stays in London and struggles with Economics, a subject deemed suitable by her parents, especially her vocal mother. In contrast, Sam has lived most of his life without his mother — she left his family to work as a singer when he was a boy.
After years of friendship, Efe and Sam get together and marry, though she’s not entirely sure they want the same things, especially when it comes to having kids. As things turn out, and despite Sam’s promises, Efe does the bulk of domestic work and has to care for his father after he has a stroke, putting her career on hold while she supports Sam’s burgeoning photography career. Efe’s struggles with loneliness, lack of fulfilment and responsibilities as a carer are palpable. Pertinently, when Sam meets his mother after years apart, she shares the reason she never came home: “I couldn’t face my life”.
Taking in the pull between selfhood, motherhood and family obligations, this is a tender, thoughtful love story, with a tremendously moving conclusion.
| Primary Genre | Literary Fiction |
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