The Furrows

The Furrows is a 2022 novel by Namwali Serpell, an American and Zambian author.[1]

The Furrows
AuthorNamwali Serpell
LanguageEnglish
Publication date
September 27, 2022
Pages288
ISBN9780593448922

Plot

The Furrows follows the story of Cassandra, also known as Cee, Williams, whose mother is a white painter, and her father is a Black academic. When Cee was twelve years old, she went swimming in the ocean with her younger brother, Wayne, who was only seven at the time. Unfortunately, as a storm suddenly intensified, Wayne mysteriously vanished, and Cee finds herself burdened with the blame for his apparent death. This tragic event shatters their family, leading to their parents' divorce.

Cee grows up in the suburbs of Baltimore, haunted by a lifetime of trauma stemming from her brother's disappearance. To cope with her pain, she seeks solace in elite therapy. As she navigates her adult life, Cee encounters men who bear a striking resemblance to Wayne. In fact, some of them even share his name. One of these men becomes romantically involved with Cee, adding further complexity to her already tangled emotions.

Within the narrative of The Furrows, timelines begin to blur, creating a sense of collapsing realities. The world itself appears to be in a state of disarray, with hints of an impending apocalypse permeating the story. These elements add to the overall atmosphere of uncertainty and unsettlement present throughout the novel.

Reception

Reviews

Los Angeles Times

“If The Old Drift put Serpell in conversation with Rushdie and García Márquez, The Furrows seems to stand on the shoulders of Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison. Above all, Serpell is working with a confidence in and commitment to her project and to the story form. She understands what it is to always have hold of the reader. She does not pander or explain. Instead, the genius is in the book’s bones, its DNA. There is a sort of palimpsest of thinking, reading: The ideas have been churning in the writer for years, but the agony of that work is nowhere to be found. Instead, Serpell gives exactly what she tells us at the outset, a stunningly acute depiction of how the endless layers of both grief and absence, the impossibly slippery act of trying to be a person, feel.”[5]

London Review of Books

Namwali Serpell's highly accomplished, highly deceptive novel The Furrows starts with the trauma of childhood grief. Its subtitle – ‘An Elegy’ – invokes the literary genre that most strongly addresses a single emotion. This theme is inhabited and then abruptly undermined.[6]

Financial Times

It is in dwelling on the aftermath, and not the accident itself, that The Furrows comes alive — shifting and undoing our understanding of grief. “What hand has reached in and turned the world over?” Cee wonders towards the end of the novel. In telling this story, Serpell too has reached in and turned the world over.[7]

References
  1. Mars-Jones, Adam (2023-02-16). "Splummeshing". London Review of Books. Vol. 45, no. 4. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  2. Martin, Emily (2023-03-24). "Ling Ma, Isaac Butler and Morgan Talty among National Book Critics Circle Award winners". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  3. Staff, The New York Times Books (2022-11-29). "The 10 Best Books of 2022". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  4. Martin, Emily (2023-03-24). "Ling Ma, Isaac Butler and Morgan Talty among National Book Critics Circle Award winners". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  5. Strong, Lynn Steger (2022-09-27). "Review: The follow-up to Namwali Serpell's debut novel is less grand — and better for it". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  6. Mars-Jones, Adam (2023). "Spulmmeshing Adam Mars-Jones". London Review of Books. 45 (4). Retrieved 2023-05-19.
  7. Goyal, Sana (2022-08-26). "The Furrows by Namwali Serpell — rewriting life and grief". Financial Times. Retrieved 2023-05-19.
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