Rosélie, a Guadeloupe native, has lived all over the world -- Tokyo, Washington DC, N’Dossou (appears to be a made-up city in Western Africa), and has now settled, somewhat, in Cape Town, South Africa. She used to live there with her husband, paint, and be generally passive. Now, after her husband’s murder at an ATM, her painting days seem over. Rosélie’s housekeeper-slash-friend has encouraged her to start a career as a medium and a healer, and in mentally tugging at the circumstances of her husband’s death, she is forced to actually go out and do something.

That’s a setup for one kind of book. And Histoire de la femme cannibale kinda unfolds that way: the prodding at a loved one’s dead leads to a reassessment and a way to deal with depression. In addition, though, there are more sub-genres.

We also get parts of the stories of Rosélie’s clients, who come to her for her gift of healing, and her friends and lovers. These mostly are immigrants from other African nations, or Afrikaners. And this being Post-apartheid South Africa, people’s racial, ethnic, and linguistic allegiance make up a large part of people’s identity, almost as basic as what gender they are. These clients’ and friends’ stories deal, of course, with trying to fit into a society that is sometimes virulently prejudiced against them. This applies to Rosélie herself as well, who is from kinda everywhere, who has no local people, and who is Parisian-French-speaking: she doesn’t fit in any of the boxes South African identity wants to tick. She’s no longer considered properly black, either: her twenty-year marriage to a white Anglo-Irish professor has seen to that. And so this book tells another kind of story: that of immigrant narratives, and life in South Africa, and the way racial identities rub up against each other.

All this adds up to a pretty solid example of what I would call political fiction: where the characters take a step back, and the real meat of the novel is discussing the real world through an in-universe window. From that point of view, Rosélie is kind of an interesting litfic character: she is passive to a fault. Not the kind of passive where she permits the people close to her -- family, lovers -- to fill her with their passions. She just ambles along, is vaguely annoyed at being dragged to yet another event by an enthused partner, but not worked up enough to object. She’s never cared much for other people’s interests, is apathetically a-political, and refuses to spend the mental effort to engage in discussions about the things that seem to animate people so much: race, inequality, globalization, the future of the African continent, the legacy of post-apartheid South Africa. She loves certain people very deeply, but prefers a one-on-one existence, as opposed to a one-to-many that is real life. As a black woman, she’s been largely invisible most of her life, un-catered to, of minimal importance in most people’s lives, and so, once left to her own devices, she largely lounges around the house in a state of permanent indifference and does nothing -- she might as well be properly invisible.

As the narrative thread moves from observations and interactions into extended flashbacks about people’s backgrounds and Rosélie’s African-American activist friends in New York, the prose moves the reader pleasingly from one sequence to the next, a languid pace that keeps on offering up discussions about race relations, identity negotiations, globalization, and the chaos that all that is in South Africa. At times that felt less convincing: Most of the places were Rosélie has lived feature extensively (except Tokyo, for some reason), and this a-chronological tour of her life reminded me sometimes of secondary-world fantasies where the plot has the protagonists visit all the areas on the map. But it is remarkable how many times that felt entirely natural: Condé, in selecting this particular character flaw, this character biography, these narrative devices, has built a novel that quite naturally and quite confidently ventures out into the territory of political discourse.

If this sort of thing appeals to you, and you want to read it: it’s been translated into English as well. ( )

Conde is excellent at unraveling the labyrinthine complexity of race and its multifarious public and private consequences. Interesting portrayal of a 50 year old woman, native of Guadaloupe, now resident of the Cape in South Africa and recently "widowed" after her partner of some 20 years is murdered during a midnight foray ostensibly to buy a pack of cigarettes. Of course, all is never as it seems. That is, people are never what they seem. And the journey to discover one's self is lifelong. The novel falters, I think, at the end, with the revelation of a betrayal that as a plot device borders, in my opinion, on the cheap and overused. Perhaps true to life, but disappointing in a novel that in many other ways is fresh and exciting. ( )

This book is written by a woman of African descent from the Caribbean island of Guadalupe. Most of the story is set in post-apartheid Capetown, South Africa. There are side trips to Japan, France, England, USA, and Guadalupe. There is also reference to other African locations, but I am not sure if they are real or made up for the story.

The book starts out well, in terms of writing and metaphor and the characters and the story. It quickly goes downhill in quality of writing and characters/story. It becomes very confusing, and lacks continuity of characters.

I think the writing issue is either beyond the author's control or a result of the translation. The character/story problems are a definite choice of the author, and are baffling.

The writing issue is that she jumps from current day to past (memories, backstory) and back with no warning. You are not always sure of where or when you are, and it makes it hard to keep the characters straight. She also has future fantasies that blur the line between supposition and reality.

The other writing issue is the character continuity. They seem to change descriptions, and relationships in an unreal manner. One character goes from dreds to shaved bald, and then she laments the loss of his silky mane when she sees him again. This is all in a very short space of time. I am never very clear who the maid's mother is, and what is her (mother/maid) relationship with the orchard owners.

The main problem is the POV character. She is an empty well. She knows nothing, cares about nothing and complains the whole way through the book.

She is married to a college professor, but she doesn't read, she doesn't follow the news, or care about any current issues. What can they possibly have to talk about ? She objects to his friends, to whole groups of people in general, and most people she meets in particular. She is always ready to feel insulted or slighted due to her race. While she may be right, she is so passive that its hard to see anyone thinking enough of her to bother insulting her.

She considers herself an artist, but she can't name her paintings, she can't say what they are about, nor what motivated her to paint them.

Her husband is murdered, but she has no interest in helping the police find the killers or the reason. She doesn't bother to look through his office, papers or computer. She has no interest in finding his cell phone to see who the last call was from. Who might have lured him into the street late at night.

At some point she becomes obsessed with a newspaper story about a woman charged with killing and eating her husband. The Cannibal Woman. There is no integration of the two stories that I can see.

Finally there are really interesting issues the book brings up, but are never dealt with. The POV is black. Her maid she calls 'colored', which is a left-over designation of the white regime for those non-whites who are not completely African. She isn't even a South African, why does she use it, why doesn't she think about it, why do the blacks in SA still use it ?

The POV documents how the city/country of SA has become decrepit, un-functional, dangerous, and crime ridden since the change, but she never explores it. She seems to accept that the blacks are divided into good and bad, probably along economic lines. There is talk about the horrible past, and the guilt and blame that belong to it, but there is no sense of trying to make a better future, just of surviving each day.

The murdered husband of the POV is a white man, and there are examples of other mixed couples and the problems they encounter, both among whites and blacks. The book is about the racial prejudice in both communities, but the POV seems to accept or work around black prejudice, while being insulted by white prejudice.

She can't accept her family, or place of origin, she can't settle or accept any other place either. She says she must stay in SA to be near her husband's grave. All along she ignores the signs that he was not what he seemed, and that her friends knew it. Their relationship was based on a lie, but all she can do is pick at others (affluent black Americans).

I finished the book, but won't be reading anything else by the author. It was not an enjoyable read, and it was too much work for too little return. ( )