Book Review – Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent kingdom was my first request on NetGalley this season. I’m grateful to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to review a copy. Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing was amazing. The writing and structure created a powerful effect that I was amazed at. I was eager to find out what her next steps would be.

Unusually for me I requested the ebook without reading the blurb. This was simply because Gyasi’s works interested me. It was refreshing to read the book without any expectations. Once again, the author’s words carried my attention seamlessly while also illuminating all the contradictions in the human mind.

SYNOPSIS

Gifty, as a child, would ask her parents to recount their journey from Ghana and Alabama. She was looking for escape in stories of romance and heroism. Their family of four is reduced to two when her brother and father are forced to live in the American South as immigrants. Gifty’s dream of a life with her family falls apart.

She returns to science years later, determined to find the answers to her brother’s opioid addiction. Gifty learns quickly that their complicated traumas have deeper roots than she thought when her mother returns to visit. Her family’s history will be traced across continents and generations, leading her deep into the dark core of modern America.

Transcendent kingdom is a heartbreaking story about love, loss, redemption and how we rebuild our lives from the rubble left by our collective pasts.

THE VOICE

Transcendent kingdomis written by Gifty in the first person. Yaa Gyasi stated in interviews that this was the first time she had used this voice. Please do it again! I believed in the character so completely that I had to check that the novel wasn’t semi-autobiographical (it isn’t).

Gifty is a complex person. You feel like you are both in her head and watching her thoughts from an outside perspective. Although Yaa Gyasi’s writing style makes it look easy, it takes skill to achieve this level of intimacy between the character and reader.

COMPULSION and RESTRAINT

The novel’s heart Transcendent kingdom is a tug-of war between science and religion, desire and repression. This creates tension and fuels the story. We see Gifty’s brother’s tragic addiction to opiates. At the other end, Gifty and her mom exert great restraint and suppress their true emotions, and ultimately pay the price for their mental health. Gifty’s lab experiments with mice show her struggle to balance both states.

Gifty, who is also a psychologist, discusses her faith throughout the book in an attempt to understand its role in her life. Although I am not religious, I felt that the novel had a spiritual aspect. It connects Gifty’s story to her mother’s, connecting Gifty’s journey with her mother’s. The church provides a second home in an inherited country that is sometimes hostile but sometimes supportive.

THE STYLE OF THE NOVEL

Now, as I read the blurb, I am struck by how neat Transcendent kingdom seems in comparison to my own reading experience. The story flows slowly and wraps around itself organically, creating reflections that seem random but have an order. This reminded me of Yaa Gyasi’s debut, Homegoing. It follows a more structured pattern but has its moments of chaos. Because Yaa Gyasi’s words are so raw, real, and readable, I was happy to follow the flow.

This exception was the ending. Because I felt the text had jumped onto my Kindle, I had to reread the last pages several times. The conclusion felt very rushed in comparison to the thoughtful pace of the novel. It would be interesting to find out what the editor and author thought when they signed off on this, and if there was a reason for this stylistic choice.

This one particularity does not and should not define Transcendent Kingdom, because the plot of this novel isn’t all that important. It is about human experience, the search to reconcile the spiritual and the physical; to define your self in a constantly changing world. It is a huge task but Yaa Gyasi has once again captured it beautifully in this profound imagining.