Book Review: This Mournably Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga

For a very long time I haven´t struggled so hard to read a book like with This Mournable Body by the Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga.

The book is part of the trilogy which starts with the Rhodesian war of independence. I haven´t read either Nervous Condition or The Book of Not where the main character Tambudzai Sigauke but my actual problem was not the coherence of the story or the story as such, but its pace and content in general.

Tambudzai is a kind of Millennial avant-la-letter, with his aimless wandering from a job to another, with no interest for having sustainable relationships - any kind of, in general; she is a lost soul wasting her time until her money will finish, snatching vegetables from the garden of her landlady while fantasizing about how to get into the skin - or bed - of one of her sons, both married, but at least with a roof under their head. A couple of pages later, she completely forgot about it and the widow Maryanga is completely forgotten.

There are funny situations one would be laugh to tears, unless it isn´t because Tambu ends up in a different setting - she had a nervous breakdown, ends up living with the cousin and her German husband, or, at the end of the story, she is working in a security firm. 

Although the action is set in 1990 there are discussions about climate change in the terms of the nowadays conversation. The dialogues between characters sound very artificious. There are references to war and particularly women that were victims of war, and the war trauma is threading sporadically through the story, and this is actually the best part of the book.

Tambudzai is the representative of a generation in crisis, a woman who is unable to cope with her own limitations, but nevertheless persistent. However, the way in which the story is told seriously bothered me as it always happens when you see a vasted narrative potential.

Rating: 2 stars