Book review: The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
I’m a sucker for a coming-of-age novel. Throw in some feminism and inspiration from folklore, and I am guaranteed to pick it up. Hence my interest in The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. With a story set in Uganda from 1934 to 1983 it also covers territory I’ve learned a little about in the last couple of years but from a very different perspective.
Kirabo is raised by her grandparents in a small village in the Bugerere region of Uganda. Her family owns a lot of land and is near a good village school, which means their house is always full of cousins sent to live with them. On the brink of her teens, Kirabo is the youngest of the children and is frequently picked on or excluded by the teenagers, but she knows her grandfather Miiro will protect her from them.
What he can’t protect her from is the flying – Kirabo has begun to have out-of-body experiences when it feels like she is flying through her house or the village. The only person she can trust to help is Nsuuta, their neighbour who is widely considered to be a witch. Nsuuta was a pharmacist until she went blind and has always lived alone, so it isn’t hard to see where the witch reputation came from. Her advice to Kirabo is largely feminist teachings.
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I’ve never read The Odyssey, but for my degree I had to study James Joyce’s Ulysses, which involved a couple of lectures detailing how it follows the structure of Homer’s classic. I’ve intended ever since to give The Odyssey a go but 20 years have passed now. I suspect the closest I will come is modern reworks, including those that tell just part of the story. And the best I’ve read so far is Ithaca by 
Over Christmas and New Year I had almost two weeks off work, so I thought I’d power through four or five books. I’d wrap up cosily from the world in chunky knits and soft blankets; move from bed to sofa to rocking chair; interrupted only by dog walks and meal times. Ha! I think I forgot that Christmas is also a time for trying to see all the family and friends for quality time. And that’s lovely, but does mean despite the truly terrible weather keeping the dog walks short, reading time was also short.
The novel Our Wives Under the Sea by 
I am not a big fan of the novel-within-a-novel device. Invariably I find the secondary narrative either too dull or too abstract to keep my attention, and my interest is only held by the primary story. I found it a little odd, then, that the opposite happened with The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak.
Earlier this year I realised that most of the books on my TBR are serious in tone and/or topic, and I needed more fun reads to intersperse in-between. So when I had a day out with a friend in Bath and popped into 
Deborah Moggach is one of those authors I’ve seen recommended in many places over the last 20+ years. A few of her novels have been made into films (including These Foolish Things, which became The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and she has written several screenplays as well. So when a family member was having a book clearout and offered me her novel Seesaw I jumped at it. I will not be jumping at her books in future.
Our temporary holiday from Netflix means I have access to considerably fewer K-dramas at the moment, but there are still a few scattered between the other big streaming services. Anna (2022) started life as a web series and is currently on Amazon Prime Video in the UK. Unusually for a K-drama it’s only 8 episodes long. I didn’t even bother checking online reviews before giving it a try.