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“Saturday’s Shadows” is a multi-voice novel about the Avoka family in an unnamed West African country. Readers meet Theo, the head of the Avoka family, who is working on the president Dr Karamoh Saturday’s memoir and might be caught up in dangerouspolitical risks.
His wife is Zahra, who works in the farming industry but is pre-occupied with re-living her past love life with an old flame. And there’s Kojo, their only child who is struggling to keep up with school-work at the prestigious International Secondary School. Atsu, the Avoka family’s house help is straight out of the village and is busy balancing learning to read and write English while trying to stay out of trouble with a suspicious man who admires her.
“Saturday’s Shadows” is a decent novel and Ayesha H Attah does an amazing job with character development.
Character development is a huge strength of Ayesha Harruna Attah’s and I remember truly enjoying the character development of characters like Sugri and Akua-Afriyie in Harmattan Rain back in 2014. My favourite character in “Saturday’s Shadows” is Kojo.
He is such a witty, hilarious, typical teenage boy with insecurities and worries of growing up.
“I was always happy to read his chapters in this novel as he finds young love and struggles with bullies and Math at school. My least favourite character in this novel is Kojo’s mother, Zahra. She’s such selfish mother and wife! Throughout the book, she only lives to satisfy her own wants and needs, which put her health and marriage at risk.
Theo Avoka’s chapters are intriguing as well. He gives the novel a political feel, which is a different dimension to the family-oriented theme of this novel. Because this story takes place in an unnamed West African nation, the different characters have various names of West African origin.
For example, some characters have Nigerian names like Kunle and Ngozi; Ghanaian names like Atsu and Kojo; Senegalese names like Ndeye and Diouf. This may seem trivial, but I really loved how there was a cute blend of West African names in this novel!
But it took me two months to finish “Saturday’s Shadows”.
I started it a day after Christmas and ended up taking a break from the book when I got to page 260 or so. I think I was just craving a story that was more fast-paced and exciting. Why did all the good action have to happen on page 300, almost towards the end? After I picked this up again in February, I found the storyline to be a bit predictable. I’m a huge fan of Ayesha H Attah’s work, but this book wasn’t as exciting for me as “Harmattan Rain”.
Definitely read this book if you enjoy character development and a family-themed story! — African Book Addict.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter