Hope & Glory

Written By Linda Malek

Hope & Glory by Jendella Benson

Reviewed by Linda
📘📘📘📘

Many thanks to @trapezebooks for this copy!

It’s refreshing to have a book where the characters, conversations and places sound real, and where the circumstances are realistic too. As a fan of stories about twins (and books set in South London), I very much breezed through this one.

Following the sudden death of her father, Glory Akindele leaves LA and returns to Peckham to mourn with her British-Nigerian family. So much has happened in the last few years and coming back home has forced her to face the demons she ran away from and the people she lost touch with, but most importantly it’s time to reconnect with her family. Stepping away from the #Instagramlife is a shock to the system when she suddenly has the role of the dutiful daughter to play. She is selfish and hasty but strong-willed and determined and you will root for her as she tries to bring her family back together in her own impulsive way.

The author pays great attention and care to the characters and the details in this novel. We get a great backstory and there are several themes and a lot of ground covered but none feel overdone. The side plots of Glory’s romantic relationship and her incarcerated brother are equally as interesting as the main plot.

For me though, Glory’s mother Celeste is the star of the show. Her suffering following the death of her husband is palpable, her dedication and struggle to raise her kids and her battle with mental health amidst an unforgiving ethnic community was conveyed really well. I enjoyed this book a lot but I think this multifaceted matriarch deserves a novel in her own right.
A lot of food for thought - I recommend it!

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

Previous

Hope & Glory
Next

Crying in H Mart