A plain-spoken queer coming-of-age story ... While often lovely, may feel like stepping into the past. It showcases a world that people in the United States like to think they’ve moved beyond ... The best of Blessings is made of sentences like these: revelatory yet unresolved, simple yet polyphonic, hopeful yet full of heartbreak.
Deft ... The chapters devoted to Uzoamaka contain some remarkably well-executed scenes and some that feel tangential. The best are those that concern her growing understanding of her son ... The character of Anozie is less well developed.
In a novel of secrecy, silences and silencing, Ibeh’s sentences throughout are fastidiously pruned ... There are several striking occasions on which this aesthetic makes way for a little more transcendence, and we’re given a hint of something higher and more hopeful ... Extraordinarily composed and deeply felt.
A quiet but profoundly moving coming-of-age story about a young gay man in mid-2000s Nigeria ... An excellent work of queer fiction, full of characters who are neither good nor bad, but simply human beings in constant flux. Ibeh writes cruelty onto the page alongside tenderness, crafting scenes of domestic gay love with the same attention and detail he gives to scenes of emotional and physical violence. He offers us a precious glimpse of the world as it truly is for so many queer people: not tragic, not perfect, not all suffering or all joy—but worth living in and telling stories about.
