Redemption in Indigo, Karen Lord, Book Review | Overbooked [CC]
Welcome back to dead good book reviews.
I’m Judith and you’re watching,
another episode of overbooked the series where
I talk about every single book on my shelves,
because chaos. Today we are talking
about Karen Lord’s redemption in Indigo.
So quick disclaimers before we start, I was gifted
a copy of this book, nobody’s paying me to talk
about books and all opinions are my own. I’m also
going to keep this as spoiler free as humanly
possible. I actually don’t think this is the kind
of book you can really spoil. But maybe that’s
just me. However, if you do want to go in knowing
absolutely nothing, obviously click away now.
It’s fine. But I will also link the story
graph for this book in case you want to check
if there are any content warnings, the dog is
maybe coming to say hello, nope, she’s going
back to bed. Cool, it’s going to be a little bit
of a different one. Normally, I script overbooked
videos. But I found that with this book, I found
it really hard to stick to that original structure
and to pin everything down. So you’re just going
to get a bit of stream of consciousness. And I
hope that’s okay, and editing Judith’s gonna edit
this
but I will try and vaguely stick to some sort
of plan. Um I just don’t know what I think about
this book. And I want to parse that out. Live in
front of a camera, though not live for you. So
this originally came out in 2010. So it’s getting
on a little bit we’re 12 years in, and it is a
retelling of a Senegalese folktale with a whole
heap of other stuff rolled into it. And there
are lots of different ways you could describe this
book, I think, folklore, fairy tale oral history,
sit around the campfire, let me tell you the
story would be the shelf I would put it on
in the shelf that is just me trying to describe
books. There are a lot of different shelves. This
sits on one of them. Let me read you the blurb so
you can get a gist of what’s going on. Because if
I try and explain it with the energy I have
right now, you’ll never have any idea worth
noting. I’ve never heard any of these names said
out loud and I couldn’t easily access a recording
of some of the names. So if I pronounce them
wrong, I do apologize. Paama’s husband is a fool
and a glutton bad enough that you followed her to
her parents home in the village of Makhenda. Now
he’s disgraced himself by murdering livestock and
stealing corn when Paama leaves him for good she
attracts the attention of the undying ones,
the Djombie, who present her with the gift,
the chaos stick, which allows her to manipulate
the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately,
not all the Djombi are happy about this gift.
The Indigo Lord believes this power should be
his and his alone, and he sets about trying
to persuade Paama to return the chaos stick,
bursting with humor and rich in fantastic detail.
Redemption. Indigo is a cover contemporary fairy
tale from a dynamic new voice Lords’ world of
spider tricksters and indigo immortals inspired in
part by Senegalese folktale is fresh, surprising
and utterly original. That’s the broad strokes of
the story. I think the story is actually in
some ways more than that, and in some ways,
much simpler than that in a really interesting
way. And the best way I think I can describe how
this book feels is that you are sat at a campfire,
around a dinner table, you are sat with people,
and someone is telling you a story. And I think
that you have to really be on board for that,
to enjoy the reading experience of this book.
And the first time that I read this book back in
2020? , it was either 2020 or 2021, I can’t quite
remember. Um I don’t think I was quite prepared
for that. And I hadn’t quite done. I hadn’t quite
got myself into the reading mindset for that. And
I found this a little bit confusing, and I didn’t
really like the characters. And I was kind of
like, it was fine. I’ll probably unhaul it on my
next unhaul. And I realized that I needed to make
this video, and I thought I would do a reread.
And with that I really tried to frame it as
I think it really helped actually, that I knew
Angela loved this. And I wanted to go into it
with as open a mind as possible, even though
I’d read it already once and I was like, Okay,
I’m putting myself in a better situation a less
stressful situation than I was in last time,
I’m going to let this book happen. And
I’m not going to try and focus too much in
on different elements. I’m just going to let
this story happen. And I think that works much
better. And I think the way that the narrator
in the story focuses in on really small details,
and then pulls out to the wider, wider situation,
you can feel the flow of a story through this that
really feels very aural, as opposed to feeling
like something that’s been written down and
structured and all of the above. It’s not that
it’s not carefully written. And it’s not that
I think that could only be experienced out loud.
But the feel of this book is very different from
a lot of other things that I have read. I also,
again, examining why I didn’t like it the first
time and why I liked a lot more this reread.
I think I got very stuck on the aspect of the
story that is retelling. And it features a
character who I don’t enjoy very much. And
I just he’s meant to be very horrible, is
Paama’s original husband, he’s meant to be
not a pleasant man. And I was reading it.
I was like, I don’t like him and I don’t
want to spend any more time with him and please
stop making me read his story and actually on a
reread I realized that you don’t actually have to
spend that much time with him. And there are more
important aspects of the story to focus on. And
that was definitely a much better experience. So
if you find the beginning of this
book, a bit of a struggle as I did,
I think that you will power through You will still
enjoy this because it does take a little while for
things to slot together. And for me, it took
two weeks for me to really understand what the
core elements of the story was and what the focus
is. And I think that’s partly because it’s not
really clear until you’re at the end what you’re
meant to take from this story and expect multiple
people take different things from it. But for me,
I needed to get to the end of a book and go, Okay,
right, this is this person’s story, they’re
doing this thing. And this is how it’s going
to end up. And now I want to follow it through
again. So in some ways, very glad that I own
this. And I can now do that again and again and
get more from it every time which is enjoyable
experience. For me. I think there’s elements of
the story that feel very similar to some other
things I’ve read weirdly, I keep coming back to
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Anansi. Boys,
I don’t actually think that’s a very good
example. Because I did not like those books.
But in terms of the gods speaking to mortals, and
that kind of folkloric, sort of version of things.
That’s what it feels like to me, but done much
better. I don’t I don’t think I could argue that
one. It’s done much better. But other than that,
I don’t think I would ever have picked this up for
it not for Angela’s recommendation. And I don’t
think that this is something I’ve read anything
super similar to this feels very unique on
my shelves, which is a good thing. Because
sometimes I do just want a little bit of a palate
cleanser. It’s still magical. It’s still fairytale
and folklore, which is one of my favorite things.
But it’s not. But it’s not super white is probably
the best way of saying that. But there was just a
freshness and a uniqueness to this that I really
appreciated. And it’s made me want to go look into
more Senegalese folklore and folk tale and just
see what else is in there. Because there’s a lot
of things where I know characters from mythology
because I ate up folklore and mythology
books when I was a kid, so many of them,
but always written from a very western
perspective. And it would be like 50 different
Greek myths, and then one from somewhere else,
I would like to do a bit of exploration and see
where these kind of trickster characters kind of
Anansi characters play out in different cultures.
I think that would be really interesting.
And I’m sure there are books about that. So
maybe I’ll be looking those up after this is
done. I think for me, this is a real testament to
not always giving up on books, because I could
have said, Look, I didn’t really like redemption
in indigo, it wasn’t for me. And even on the
second read, when I was really struggling with
the first section, I could have gone like eh No,
I’m done, I’m not going to film a video, I’ll
find something else to fill that slot. And in the
end, if I hadn’t powered through, I wouldn’t have
enjoyed, I wouldn’t have had the enjoyment of the
last half of this book. And don’t get me wrong.
I’m a huge fan of DNFing if you’re not enjoying
something, you can DNF but this i It’s 290 pages,
I could get to the end, I knew I could. And
realizing that I was fixating on this one element
of the book that I wasn’t enjoying this character.
And that wasn’t what the book was about. Right? I
wasn’t getting the enjoyment because I wasn’t
letting myself enjoy it. And it does make me
wonder how many books in the past that I read
at the wrong time or that I read that I was just
finding difficult. It wasn’t actually that the
book was bad it was that I wasn’t in the right
place, or that the book started in a different
place, and then would have been really good at
the end. It’s made me much more open to some
of the things on my shelves, I think, which is
no bad thing, I suppose. That being said, I have
read some things where I’ve powered through in the
hope that it would get better and it never did. So
maybe that’s not a universal experience lounging
now because I’ve been allowed to blither because
I didn’t give myself any structure for this.
Well, do you have any recommendations of other
books inspired by folklore or collections of
folklore that aren’t super Western focused? I
would love to read them. I would love to hear
those recommendations, please. And thank you
equally Have you read this Do you have plans
to I’m really sorry that I cannot in fact link
you to an Angela review and she does not have a
public review for this book. But I’m sure that
it will be in some of her favorite books videos
from a couple of years ago, I’m
certain because I’ve definitely seen
her talk about this book. So that’s someone who’s
a little bit more probably coherent talking about
it while you’re down there commenting. If you
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Thank you so much. You guys are the
best. I think that’s everything.
That’s all from me and I
will see you in the next one.
It’s gonna be some bloopers now. And why
are you playing with my office chair?
