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Narrated by Morowa Yejidé
Morowa YejidéUnabridged — 10 hours, 4 minutes
Narrated by Morowa Yejidé
Morowa YejidéUnabridged — 10 hours, 4 minutes
Longlisted for the 2022 Women's Prize for Fiction
With echoes of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Yejidé's novel explores a forgotten quadrant of Washington, DC, and the ghosts that haunt it."Yejidé's surreal new novel has no shortage of otherworldly surprises, but it's her this-worldly protagonist who steals the show...Informed by a richly woven mythology and propelled by themes of regret and revenge, Creatures of Passage has earned some apt comparisons to Toni Morrison's Beloved."
--Philadelphia Inquirer, One of the Best Books of Winter 2021
"Hauntingly magical, this sophomore novel by Morowa Yejidé centers a young woman dealing with the loss of her brother, her young great-nephew who mysteriously shows up at her door and Washington, DC, the city that provides an otherworldly backdrop to this imaginative thriller."
--Ms. Magazine, A Most Anticipated Book of 2021
"A deeper, broader, and more audacious immersion in magical realism...Historic detail and mythic folklore forge a scary, thrilling vision of life along America's margins."
--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review
"Skillfully blending fantasy and stark reality while blurring the line between the metaphoric and the tangible, Yejide' successfully tells the story in fits and starts as each major character adds a piece to the puzzle...Highly recommended."
--Library Journal, STARRED Review
"Yejidé creates a tapestry of interconnected stories of guilt, loss, love, grief, justice, and restoration...Yejidé's prose is often stunning...The story's rich texture evokes the ghost stories of Toni Morrison."
--Publishers Weekly
"Fatal racism, police violence, pedophilia, family dysfunction--all the horrific ills of contemporary society wreak destruction, but somehow humanity survives."
--Booklist
"In this beautifully written and gloriously conceived novel, Morowa Yejidé reveals her mastery yet again. This book is both contemporary and ancient, frightening and stirring, playful and wise, an unforgettable blurring of reality and genres from its haunted Plymouth automobile to the mysteries in the fog in this alternate America and hidden Washington, DC. With its lyricism and bold imagination, Creatures of Passage is unlike anything you've ever read."
--Tananarive Due, author of Ghost Summer: Stories
Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River.
Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, ten-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash--reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school, but still questioning what and who he saw--has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man."
When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys's door bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man, Nephthys must face what frightens her most.
Morowa Yejidé's deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim itself.
"The novel is worthy of every Toni Morrison comparison it receives, effortlessly blending the brutalities of D.C.’s history with the mythical and supernatural. Creatures of Passage is a lyrical journey that will stick with you."
"Creatures of Passage resists comparison. It’s reminiscent of Beloved as well as the Odyssey, but perhaps its most apt progenitor is the genre of epic poems performed by the djelis of West Africa . . . All these otherwise clashing elements become, in this cast, a cohesive whole, telling us that this, too, is America."
"Yejidé’s surreal new novel has no shortage of otherworldly surprises, but it’s her this-worldly protagonist who steals the show . . . Informed by a richly woven mythology and propelled by themes of regret and revenge, Creatures of Passage has earned some apt comparisons to Toni Morrison’s Beloved."
In this ethereal novel, listeners experience the rare treat of a gifted writer narrating her own mesmerizing work. Yejidé's introspective, languorous pace is well suited to the otherworldly journeys of twins Osiris and Nephthys Kinwell—he from the other side of death's door and she barely on this side of it.” —AudioFile Magazine
"A deeply layered novel of astonishing scope, suffused in the mythical, accented by the magical, but viscerally rooted in elemental human emotions. A deeply satisfying read."—Bloom
"Comparisons will be made to Toni Morrison and they will be well-founded, but Morowa Yejidé is in a class of her own with Creatures of Passage, a mesmerizing tale about love, loss, revenge, death, and restoration that hovers close to the edge of fantasy yet is deeply grounded in history and in a reality easily recognizable in the contemporary world."—Elizabeth Nunez, author of Even in Paradise
"Although set in our recent past, Creatures of Passage is at heart a powerful ghost story about people haunted by the shadows of time and the shadows of blood. In the pages of this novel we discover a world that is fully recognizable, as concrete and real as Toni Morrison's Ohio, but also as fantastic and mythical as Gabriel García Márquez's Macondo. That said, make no mistake: Morowa Yejidé is a masterful storyteller in her own right, able to spin and sustain an inventive tale illuminated by a singular truth, that death is 'another form of living.'"—Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Song of the Shank
One of African Book Addict’s Most Anticipated 2021 Releases
In this ethereal novel, listeners experience the rare treat of a gifted writer narrating her own mesmerizing work. Yejidé’s introspective, languorous pace is well suited to the otherworldly journeys of twins Osiris and Nephthys Kinwell—he from the other side of death’s door and she barely on this side of it. Yejidé richly characterizes the alcoholic Nephthys, who is burdened by the voices of the dead yet strives to guide her young great-nephew, whose tales of “The River Man” lead her to suspect he is seeing the ghost of Osiris. Poverty, racism, and death are intensely examined with the underlying hope of ultimate justice and renewal. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
| BN ID: | 2940175542395 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Brilliance Audio |
| Publication date: | 03/16/2021 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
