Reading Wayétu Moore’s debut novel, She Would Be King...feels a lot like watching a superb athlete’s performance ... Moore makes deft use of magical realism, and her plot and its details are compelling ... Like her remarkable protagonist Gbessa, the author has tapped into her own backstory–and emerged with literary superpowers.
The Liberian-American writer’s debut novel is a Marvelesque national epic about Liberia’s independence centered on three supernaturally gifted misfits ... The varied and frenetic action makes for a novel that, while stimulating, is often confusing and overstuffed. Some sections read like folk tales or adventure novels, while those set in Virginia serve up reheated plantation melodrama. She Would Be King shows greater originality when Moore dissects Monrovia’s social world ... Moore’s sophisticated treatment of [the singular relationship between Liberia’s black settlers, for whom 'returning' to Africa was a form of deliverance from American white supremacy] showcases her novelistic talents, though the tension somewhat dissipates when the 'real' enemies arrive: The complex dance of nation-building gives way to a Garveyite battle royale pitting the reconciled settlers and natives against French slavers who attack Monrovia.
Moore’s vivid characters, beguiling language and powerful subject matter engage us thoroughly. The book is unforgettable ... Magic, ghosts, transmogrification and all manner of hauntings are as commonplace as the casual death and dismemberment of Africans ... The novel examines some...colonial tensions and contradictions, but it leaves many others unexamined in its focus on the European colonial menace. Still, even with these fissures, the story is irresistibly evocative and fierce. She Would Be King is a masterfully wrought alternate history of magical black resistance and should not be missed.
...[a] compelling debut novel ... Moore’s brand of magic realism is close kin to Beloved and The Underground Railroad, bending the rules of history and the natural world in order to move both closer to justice. When it comes to explorations of slavery in novels, there is little patience left for catalogues of atrocities, but an abiding interest in finding fresh ways of exhuming something useful from the murk. Give us alternative histories, unfamiliar forms, genre-leaping speculations. Moore’s novel pulls this off with an epic sweep. It’s a tour de force that crescendoes to its conclusion, reimagining the birth of Liberia in a way that is tender, humane and suffused with lyricism.
Wayétu Moore’s debut novel is more than an imagining of Liberia’s mid-1800s beginnings; it is a magical account of ongoing, individual and collective independence from oppressive forces ... Moore’s insightful, emotional descriptions graft these stories right onto readers’ hearts. A celebration of freedom and justice that compassionately tells the stories of exceptional people, Moore’s debut is about every fight against death and bondage.
Wayétu Moore does something quite astonishing in She Would Be King, a novel that is awash in poetry, ancestry and hints of what might be called magic, but decidedly rooted in the brutality of history. Composed and compelling, brimming with devastating truths and sparkling with ferocity, this is a masterpiece of a debut. Moore's voice is at once vibrantly original and steeped in lineage ... The lives of these three characters intersect in sharply powerful ways ... Dynamic and mesmeric, this story is freshly woven and gorgeously evoked. It's action-packed and fast-paced, but lingers on prescient moments and brims with aching heart. Moore does not miss a beat. She Would Be King was an honor and a joy to read.
Wayétu Moore's debut novel, She Would Be King, is an astonishing feat of storytelling. Moore leads readers through an expansive and magical retelling of Liberia's cultural and social history. Throughout she challenges the historical record to demonstrate fallibility as the nation both resisted and supported oppression and marginalization of its own people. Likewise, her characters are antiheroes whose errors only develop their fortitude ... Moore skillfully incorporates indigenous history and myth to illustrate resistance and acquiescence to colonization. Her consideration of inter-tribal relations reflects a bottom-up history centralizing the value of tribal life, culture, and social contributions ... Moore's adroit deconstruction of larger historical narratives serves to complicate absolutism and hero worship.
In this ambitious novel, Moore artfully and lovingly uses her protagonists to explore exile, belonging, resilience, relationships, loss, and freedom amidst the larger context of the African Diaspora ... She does so through magical realism and a historical storytelling, reminiscent of Toni Morrison. Perhaps one of the most beautiful things Moore does is to give voice to those who would not or did not have a voice ... This dynamic novel leaves you both satisfied and full of anticipation for what’s to come, in fiction and in reality.
Wayétu Moore's She Would Be King was just such a pleasant surprise for me—and a powerful, politically necessary one in the era of #BlackLivesMatter and the continued plundering of Africa's wealth ... the novel's brief descriptions available online hide the richness of Moore's prose style, the beauty of her language, and the resonance of the novel's fantastic elements with the larger discourse of Afrofuturism ... Taking place at this unique moment in African history, Moore shows the shift from local to global thinking in disputes over identity, race, and belonging as they affect the colony and later nation of Liberia.
While the subject matter of Moore’s novel is certainly focused on humanity, specifically the lack of humanity shown by white people to black people down through the centuries, it is a stretch to say her novel dazzles with anything close to transcendence. The problem lies less in the genre mixing – Moore is an inventive writer who makes good use of African myth – but in the language, which is for the most part functional and forgettable, and eventually struggles to hold up the weight of all the subplots ... a clever and interesting reimagining of a history of subordination ... Occasionally the descriptions are noteworthy...But more often than not – particularly as Moore tries to make the strains of her narrative cohere with an effortful omniscient voice that watches over the characters – there is frequent exposition and convoluted expression.
Moore uses an accomplished, penetrating style—with clever swerves into fantasy—to build effective critiques of tribal misogyny, colonial abuse, and racism.
Moore is a brisk and skilled storyteller who weaves her protagonists' disparate stories together with aplomb yet is also able to render her sprawling cast of characters in ways that feel psychologically compelling. In addition, the novel's various settings—Virginia, Jamaica, and West Africa—are depicted so lushly that readers will find themselves enchanted. Unfortunately, getting these characters' stories to intersect at the back end of the book requires a level of narrative contrivance that sends the tale careening out of myth and into the realm of clumsiness. A sweeping and entertaining novel encumbered by an unwieldy plot.
... a lot of voice-shifting, but Moore’s voice steadies when describing Gbessa’s ordeals ... Writers are either 'putter-inners' or 'taker-outers.' Moore, a putter-inner, sometimes overwhelms her own best writing, and inconsistencies in her narrative voice can weaken some of the strongest elements of the novel. Charlotte’s inability to raise her baby or save her lover is as poignant as Orpheus’s inability to keep Eurydice from sliding back into the underworld. She is every enslaved mother, every African woman who lost a child to slavery. But as a whispering enigma, she’s confusion. Yet such flaws do not seriously compromise a novel that is both imaginative and ambitious.
