A brief, but in-depth look inside the life of a young Igbo girl from her beginning in Nigeria to her end in London. Born even as her mother, the original Abigail, died, Abigail is torn between being her mother and being herself. Abani helps us see how Abigail's life has taught her to see herself and the people who surround her. She's a survivor constantly fighting against those who would use her. Until she realizes that, when she does make a choice, others fight against her.My TakeGawd. Makes yo...

The brutality documented in this novella about a fourteen year old Igbo girl whose mother dies in childbirth, father commits suicide, and who is transplanted to England by an uncle who wants to sell her into prositution, left me with a heavy feeling of doom and dismay. Abani is a poet as well as a novelist and so this does feel more like an extended poem at times, with a lilting imagery laden prose that is quite often beautiful in its simplicity. I felt nothing but pity for Abigail as she cuts a...

Becoming AbigailbyChris Abaniis one of the most searing, gripping, painful books I've ever read. The story is told from the pov of Abigail, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere which is simultaneously a strength & a weakness of the book. The weakness is that ultimately I was relieved to escape from Abigail & her suffering; the strength is the vividness of her experience & her suffering. Abigal is brought from Nigeria as a young teen to be sold into prostitution. This is one of many betrayals she...

Becoming Abigail is a short haunting story that hits very hard.

I listened to the audible narration by Robin Miles - for someone who doesn't usually like female narrators, she did a great one. This is my first read of Chris Abani and I am sure it won't be my last and I think I will even read this book again as I think his work, poetic and abrasive at the same time, deserves close reading. It is a difficult topic well written with the novella's structure switching between The and Now chapters - this helps us as a reader cope with the terror and loneliness tha...

Chris Abani is a novelist and poet who often writes about his native Nigeria. Graceland, his novel about a boy in whiteface growing up poor in Lagos, broke onto the literary scene like a storm. Since then, Abani has written several books of poetry, as well as novels and novellas, all of which look frankly at conditions under which the most exploitable among us must live.Becoming Abigail looks at the life of a young girl raised by her father in Nigeria. Her mother, also called Abigail, died in bi...

I had a hard time deciding how to rate this book and finally decide on "it was amazing" because the writing was amazing. On the one had it was a hard book to read, because the subject was so sad and disturbing, but on the other hand it was beautifully written. There were passages I felt like I wanted to memorize and it was deeply affecting. The kind of book that just takes your breath away at the end and you have to sit for a few minutes after you finish to regain yourself. I know in my head tha...

Incredibly beautiful imagery. Abani is doing wonderful things with language, and his style is to the point, sharp, and startling, and his images are striking. There were, however, a few areas where the repetition of certain phrases and words were distracting. If this had come up in one of my workshops, I would have had a lot to say about using the word "loam" in nearly every chapter.

The style was beautiful, clearly a novel by a poet. The story weaves together two times, so they each reflect upon the other, and that is well done, but some of it... I don't know, I feel like it was trying to build a particular shape and ended up in a different one instead, that it didn't quite succeed. But it is hard to be objective. I think if I read it again (which I am not certain when I would) I might see more, because I will know what it is building to.

Such a tragic story, the lyricism fits the topic perfectly and gives so much depth and so many layers of myth and maturity and life/death to a physically short book.

The saddest story, written about a horrid subject, turns out to be one of the most well-written books of all time. It holds you gripped in it's clutches well after the last pages is turned. The 120-page novella, from Chris Abani, Becoming Abigail haunts me from the first time I read it - it calls from my bookshelves to be read on occasion and I wanted to suggest you download or order it from Amazon today, It will touch your heart for ever. The prose reads like poetry, the descriptions evocative,...

OMG! This book is beyond belief! The treatment regarding abuse of women in Africa and its attached social ills are piled up like a deck of cards then they all come tumbling down-like the establishment should. I loved this book, but you better have a strong stomach to deal with what's really going on.

I heard Abani speak on the craft of writing last summer - he was so profound that I was almost in tears. I read Abigail for my writer's reading group and although I found the book over the top with unmitigated suffering, Abani's ability to keep the reader reading such difficult material through his technical use of distancing and even poetry was very interesting. At first I was offended by the use of beautiful language to embody such misery but it's that very poetry that elevated the book from d...

Loved this novella from the brilliant Nigerian poet and author Chris Abani, who desribes himself as a "zealot of optimism". The story is focused on a young Nigerian girl "Abigail" who's mother of the same name died giving birth to her. It shows both the daughter's and her father's ways of dealing with her death, and the daughter's escape from prostitution. Difficult topic, done with superb narrative. Very powerful work.

The book is about a young girl, Abigail, who is named for her mother, who dies during childbirth. Abigail comes from a Nigerian family, a highly patriarchal culture, and her father is completely distraught over his wifes death. His pain is made worse by the fact that Abigail looks just like her mother, causing her father to see only his dead wife in her. Abigail also suffers from bouts of insanity, spurred by her search for identity – she is compared to her mother so often by her father that she...

Abani's prose is beautiful in Becoming Abigail. A few times I wondered if Abani himself would have edited out some cliches in his writing, if one of his students had turned it in as creative writing, but these were very few compared to the overwhelming prevalence of novel imagery and striking language. The story of the daughter, who tries very hard not to become Abigail, and a girl, who painfully becomes a woman, is mostly disturbing and uncomfortable. Time travel is done well, as the narration

A shocking and yet compelling portrait of Abigail, struggling to come out from her mother's shadow and abused by pretty much all the men and boys surrounding her."And even light can become dirty, falling sluggish and parchment-yellow across a floor pitted by hope walked back and forth, the slap of slipper on concrete echoing the heat gritting its teeth on the tin roof, the sound sometimes like rain, other times like the cat-stretch of metal expanding and contracting.""She ran her fingers meditat...

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Abani at the Geraldine R. Dodge poetry festival in 2008. This was not so much a book but a work of art. It is not something you can borrow and give back-I have to possess this. There are so many scenes and turns of phrase that are like a 3D poem, a sculpture, a palpable piece of art. A girl who struggles to find herself-in the ashes of her mother's memory and the pain and despair of her father as he abused her. The child never really gets to live and yet somehow...

My original review was one line went simply "It does bite hard." I later realized what a horrible, horrible pun that would have been.Seriously though, a haunting short story.