Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Poetical prose or lyrical language have become a bit of a cliché, more often than not indicating that someone attempted to prettify their pededestrian writing by garlanding it with flowery adornments which frequently have a purplish tinge to them. Mind you, I still prefer that in most cases to supposedly "plain" language, which rather tends to be synonymous with "bland" and "lazy".

Not so, however, with Yvonna Adhiambo Owuor's novel The Dragonfly Sea - the poetical language here has not been grafted on the narrative retroactively but flows out of what the novel tells and how it tells it. And "flow" is indeed the operative word here, becuase the sea and its tidel motions are not only the main subject here but also the central structural element. The novel is about many things - the coming of age of its main protagonist Ayaana, life on the Kenyan island of Pate, about friendship and family, love and life - but all of them connect to the sea and are encompassed by it, and events and people come and go and return again like the tides of flood and ebb. And the novel`s language is as colourful and as Protean, as shifting and unsteady but also as flowing in a steady rhythm.

In short (and to avoid getting all flowery and effusive myself), I loved The Dragonfly Sea; it is a beautiful novel and I have nto been as moved by a book for quite some time.… (meer)

I really wanted to enjoy this book. It isn't the type of book I would normally pick up, but I was looking for something different, and the description grabbed me. However, I couldn't get on with the way the story was written. The prose came across more as some type of poetry (and I really dislike reading poetry). It seemed disjointed and cryptic and reading it was hard work. I persevered to around the halfway point, but reading shouldn't be hard work. It's a shame, as there was a good story lurking under there, but it became a little too swamped by the poetry for me.… (meer)