The Book of Memory (2015) is narrated by a young albino woman called
Memory. She is accused of murdering her boss, Lloyd Hendricks. She has been on
death row in the local prison at Chikurubi, Zimbabwe, for the past two years.
Vernah Sithole, her lawyer in Zimbabwe, suggests that Memory writes down
her account of the incident for American journalist Melinda Carter. Being an
albino, and different from everyone else – for she looks white – her parents
sold her to Lloyd, a white man, when she was nine years old. And that’s the
beginning of her side of the events.
Memory’s version of events is told in three parts: the first is of her
childhood and family home with her parents and two sisters – Joyi and Mobhi –
as well as her current life in prison;
the second is about her life with Lloyd, ‘’a Rhodesian eccentric’’ in his
mansion called Summer Madness; and the last part ends with her waiting in
prison, concluding her account: even in the bleakest times, there is hope.
Memory says, ‘’I am writing to keep myself alive’’ but is her account
truthful? Not only is this novel about the fallibility or veracity of memory,
but it is also about fate and free will, love and loss, difference and
indifference, and guilt and forgiveness.
There is a long preamble before Memory (on page 214) talks about that day
in November that Lloyd died, where she describes everything from her first waking
moments. And then the gaps form in her memory of the evening hours. Even as Memory
writes, she too is realising some truths. The reader never knows what the lawyer
or journalist makes of her account, but will it evoke sympathy or cynicism,
will it expose facts and fantasies? Credible or coincidental, fact or fallacy, it
is nevertheless an interesting read.
MARTINA
NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But
Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian
Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on
a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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