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![\"Capps](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/3472686_web1_Tochi-Eze-Author-Photo-Photo-Credit-Capps-Juliano.jpg\")
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Capps Juliano photo<\/p>\n
Tochi Eze\u2019s debut novel contains echoes of Chinua Achebe\u2019s 1958 classic Things Fall Apart, albeit tackling similar themes in a quieter fashion.<\/p>\n
In 1962 and 2005, we are introduced to two descendants from Umomilo, Margaret and Benjamin, who engage in a star-crossed love affair. Margaret\u2019s ancestor, who struggled with mental illness, played a gruesome role in the affair of the three virgins, while Benjamin is the descendant of Phyllis. Benjamin\u2019s other three grandparents are white and British, and when he arrives in Nigeria on a work assignment, seeking his roots, he appears white to the Nigerians he meets.<\/p>\n
In the 2005 timeline, Benjamin and Margaret have become estranged, and we meet their daughter and grandson, who Margaret believes to be cursed by events in Umimilo a century ago. Margaret becomes very focused on ending the curse that traditional spiritualists had warned would befall her if she married Benjamin, and this leads to the couple reconnecting.<\/p>\n
The novel isn\u2019t about Benjamin\u2019s questions of identity, nor is it about his quest to learn the secrets of the past. In fact both he and Margaret abandon their searches into their histories fairly quickly, and the reader only learns of the truth through the omniscient narrator. Mental illness is a constant theme in every generation of the novel, and is depicted as a terrifying condition that causes extreme violence in its sufferers, who have little insight into the damage they are doing.<\/p>\n
The conflict between traditional beliefs and Christianity is also explored, though not with the incisiveness of Achebe\u2019s novel or his broad perspective. This Kind of Trouble is a quieter book that focuses intently on one family, rarely zooming out to the wider society. When Eze does do so, the writing is strong and sure, like the traditions it honours.<\/p>\n
Eze describes women around the office water cooler with keen observation: \u201cThey all laughed, their talk moving between Igbo and English and Yoruba and pidgin, their language so braided that it became its own separate thing.\u201d She writes about traditional village life: \u201cThe people of Umomilo were taught to hold one another\u2019s problems the same way the pots collected the first rainwater \u2014 each man seeking to help his neighbour\u2026 The matter was simple. If it rains, you do not leave your neighbour\u2019s pots attended. When trouble comes, you do not throw your face the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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And, in a moment of introspection: \u201cMargaret considered herself a Christian in every sense, but she was also, like her matriarch, Oriaku, born into a line of priestesses. She had seen what the psalms could do to her anxious heart. But she also knew the sturdy touch of her ancestral rituals.\u201d<\/p>\n
An omniscient narrator can sometimes create distance between the reader and the characters, which ends up being the case in This Kind of Trouble \u2014 we are not given much insight into their thinking. Benjamin especially makes some very troubling and life-changing decisions without much explanation as to why. This might be forgivable if characterization was being sacrificed for the bigger picture.<\/p>\n