{"id":6953,"date":"2017-12-04T07:24:53","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T07:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6953"},"modified":"2017-12-06T12:08:47","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T12:08:47","slug":"behold-the-dreamers-by-imbolo-mbue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6953","title":{"rendered":"Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Published by Fourth Estate UK <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>February 2017<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>400pp, hardback<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/affiliates.abebooks.com\/c\/99367\/77798\/2029?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abebooks.com%2Fservlet%2FSearchResults%3Fan%3Dimbolo%2Bmbue%26bi%3D0%26bx%3Doff%26ds%3D30%26servlet%3DImpactRadiusAffiliateLinkEntry%26sortby%3D17%26tn%3Dbehold%2Bthe%2Bdreamers\">Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/mbueuk.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-7686\" src=\"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/mbueuk-184x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"184\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/mbueuk-184x300.jpg 184w, http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/mbueuk.jpg 307w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 184px) 100vw, 184px\" \/><\/a>\u2018A magnificent land of uninhibited dreamers\u2019 or a rotten capitalist nightmare? Neni Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant to New York, believes the US to be the former, but her husband Jende has come at last to see it as the latter, a place where his life has become unendurable, alternating between a roach-infested Harlem apartment and a 14-hour working day spent washing restaurant dishes, to keep his family from going under.<\/p>\n<p>The immigrant\u2019s dilemma, that bewildering juxtaposition of hope and lived experience, is one of the topics that Mbue cleverly encompasses in her debut, a gently-narrated, subtle tale of a Cameroonian family riding the destructive wave of American life during the economic crash of 2008. As the novel opens, Jende, a man without formal immigrant status, is helped by friends to secure a job as chauffeur to a high-powered Lehman Brothers executive, Clark Edwards. Borrowing the suspense inherent in this arrangement, Mbue draws a picture of Jende and his family becoming increasingly drawn into a relationship with the Edwards. Clark relies on Jende&#8217;s discretion while the Edwards children, Vince and Mighty, become friends with the Jongas and their son Liome. And Neni spends a summer working for Clark\u2019s wife Cindy in their eye-poppingly comfortable Hamptons home. The financial and material contrasts of this set-up may be obvious, but the opportunities for cultural comparisons are also significant and Mbue takes full advantage.<\/p>\n<p>As the shadow of the coming crisis intensifies, so other problems develop for Neni and Jende. The birth of their second child Timba compounds their financial difficulties while their individual and joint relationships with the Edwards become ever more tangled. Yet Mbue \u2013 a Cameroonian herself \u2013notably inclines away from the predictable. Her use of the African perspective in two continents and her careful but unsentimental portrait of the Jonga family are reminiscent of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie\u2019s <em>Americanah<\/em>. Mbue is less overtly ironic perhaps but shares insights and wry humor in her capturing of Neni and Jende\u2019s far-from-identical responses. The novel\u2019s perspective belongs plausibly to both of them.<\/p>\n<p>Mbue\u2019s deft novel avoids didacticism while scrutinizing social and cultural gulfs, and plumbing the American dream with an outsider\u2019s curiosity. Her first book, smoothly readable and of wide appeal, both engages and surprises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>*A 2017 Notable Book<\/p>\n<p>Reviewed by Elsbeth Lindner<\/p>\n<p>As the shadow of the coming crisis intensifies, so other problems develop for Neni and Jende. The birth of their second child Timba compounds their financial difficulties while their individual and joint relationships with the Edwards become ever more tangled. Yet Mbue \u2013 a Cameroonian herself \u2013notably inclines away from the predictable [&#8230;] in Revews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6953"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7689,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6953\/revisions\/7689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}