As for the mediums I spend the most time with, movies has got to be it. Sure, the extended storytelling of television has its perks, and music is great when my eyes are sore. Books, however, are the weird medium. They're the ones I feel I neglect the most. I wish I read more instead of watching a seemingly endless amount of movies.
This year I told myself I would read more, and I have. I am in the back half of Ellison's seminal Invisible Man, and nearly finished with Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge. Recently, I read Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (try saying that three times fast), yes, because of the Fukunaga movie that's coming on Netflix next month. However, Iweala's book is fantastic in it's own right, regardless of film association.
Beasts follows Agu, a child soldier fighting for a hazy cause in an unnamed nation. Iweala writes from Agu's point of view, which means that the book reads like it was written by a child. It is not childish, though. The violence is very real.
Oh God. What am I doing, Luftenant is saying. He is spy oh. It is ambush oh. Let's just kill him and clear from this place. (105)
What makes Beasts of No Nation so effective is what Agu doesn't understand about the violence. Iweala, in an impressive showcase of dramatic irony, plays on Agu's naivety very well. Despite the entire book reading like Agu's internal monologue, warts and all, Beasts of No Nation is very readable. It's tense, exciting, and gripping. And yet, maybe fortunately, it is so brief.
There's not much, I don't think, in the way of faults. Many of the characters except Agu are not very fleshed out, including his superiors Commandant and "Luftenant". It is intentional, though, and perhaps better that we only understand about as much as Agu does about them.
So before the Netflix movie's mid-October premiere, I highly recommend reading Iweala's striking debut. The world of Beasts of No Nation feels individual, and Iweala/Agu's voice rings true to all corrupted youth.
9/10
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