- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Soho Press; Reprint edition (July 1 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1569472408
- ISBN-13: 978-1569472408
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 13.8 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 308 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,707,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Set in Uganda in the months leading up to Idi Amin's coup d'?tat in 1971, Shand's debut novel chronicles the domestic life of Agnes, an American expatriate and part-time teacher. A devoted mother of three, Agnes is locked in an unfulfilling marriage with John, a college teacher and Lutheran deacon who tells her that she can and must will herself to love him. But Agnes dreams of passion, eventually entering an affair with Wulf, a Polish professor and colleague of her husband, as the political structure of Uganda grows daily more unstable. The dramatic political upheaval that looms in the novel's background intrudes little into Agnes's personal drama. As a narrator, she is extremely articulate on the subject of her emotional life, yet almost entirely mute about the events occurring in the country around her; information about changing social tides are gleaned through local rumor and gossip. But the plot is secondary in this dreamy novel; more important are the well-controlled writing and the detailed character descriptions that demand that readers pay attention to every word. Most chapters are constructed almost as a meditation, opening with a brief second-person, semi-instructional essay on African life, followed by a vignette extrapolating the essay's moral and philosophical musings. The novel is rife with luxurious passages of poetic prose, and though Shand chooses to downplay the drama of the Ugandan political landscape, she succeeds admirably in presenting Agnes's quotidian struggles to assimilate with African culture and to cope with her loveless marriage. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Shand's tensely erotic debut novel is set in Uganda during Idi Amin's rise to power. Agnes, an American teacher, is trapped in a loveless marriage to John, a minister. Although she is devoted to her children, she often fantasizes about the men she meets. Then, when John unknowingly befriends one of these men and invites him to a party, Agnes' daydreams take root in the real world. Agnes' affair with Wulf, a Polish researcher, is paralleled by John's affair with a young Ugandan student, who eventually denounces him for seducing her under the pretext of being her "spiritual advisor." Agnes' relationship with Wulf, meanwhile, reflects her love for Uganda and the way of life that she has adopted as her own. In the friction between Agnes and John, Shand reveals the insidious political conflicts that made Amin's bloody coup possible. Writing with intensity and passion, Shand deftly examines issues of morality and sexuality within the context of conflicting cultural standards. Bonnie Johnston
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Weak, uninspired. Don't buy.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Gravity of Sunlight (Paperback)
This book was bursting with amateurish problems/mistakes that should have been removed by any good editor. The story was tasteless and banal, like eating cream of wheat every day of your life. The praises about the love story are in total disregard of the stylistic errors and cheesy genre orientation of this fiction. This is Danielle Steel in a cheap disguise. It has no litereary value whatsoever. Rosa Shand is a hack. After a while, I threw the book across the room and refused to read past the half way mark of the book.Buy this only if you have absolutely no respect for yourself.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hot & Sensitive: Romantic Tensions in African Setting,
By James P Shanor (South Carolina) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gravity of Sunlight (Hardcover)
Beautiful and flowing. Rare. Shand is a masterful writer. She captures the universalities of tensions in marriage, yet draws vivid pictures of the disappearing mixtures of subcultures in a Uganda in turmoil a generation ago. The lessons are subtle and still relevant.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A story of many layers,
By Fanoula Sevastos (Lyndhurst, OH USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Gravity of Sunlight (Paperback)
Rosa Shand's first book is filled with simple but beautiful language, description of the physical and the emotional experience of living in Uganda during the time right before and during Idi Amin's political coup. As the story unfolds, Shand manages to very gently capture the very complicated relationships between husband and wife, wife and lover, amidst the rhythms of life in a foreign land, all which help make this a very successful debut novel. Agnes is our narrator, and she, her husband John and their young children have moved to Uganda. John is a professor teaching at the college; Agnes teaches part-time at the lower school. Each of them is lost in their respective idealisms, and their relationship is suffering for it, as they don't seem to have an intimate connection on any real level. Agnes, who is always searching to fulfill what she feels is a lack of meaningful attachment to her husband, meets Wulf, who is also teaching at the university, and is a friend of her husband's, they embark on a tentative relationship. What works about this novel, is that this affair, in all its various stages and with all its various consequences, is written in a way that echoes the lifestyle and the political uncertainties of the country. Shand weaves Agnes' story with an intimate look at a society very different from Agnes'and our own, and these dual storylines are revealed piece by piece to the reader as the circumstances of Agnes' daily life allows. She uses deceptively simple language to tell a story of many layers, each one as lush and as precarious as the next. A fine book to curl up with on a wintry weekend, which is about how long it will take to read.
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