There’s an art to depicting things going seriously wrong very quickly, and Akwaeke Emezi’s latest novel, Little Rot, is a masterwork of the form ... Mesmerizing ... What gives Little Rot its vitality are its overlapping love stories, its characters’ longing, their acts of devotion and tenderness in defiance of a world in which a soft heart is a liability ... It’s a testament to how complete a sense of contamination Emezi creates in the rest of the novel, particularly in the stomach-turning and dramatically perfect final twist that drags even the reader into complicity. We come away troubled, unsettled — and in some subtle way changed.
Holding it all together is a plot that ducks and dives with cinematic verve ... Little Rot isn’t a perfect novel – Aima, for instance, blurs as a character, and cynicism snubs some of its deeper questions – but it bears out those words of warning with unflinching dedication.
Resists easy categorization. It has the dark twists and pace of a thriller, the ambitious scope of literary fiction, the language of poetry and the yearning of romance ... For all its merits, veers toward cynicism.
Hurtles toward devastation, but even as you anticipate the horrors ahead, the escapist thriller-style pacing will keep you pushing on ... Tumbles into shadow. For every arousal, there is violence; for every moment of love, there is ruin.
Entertaining ... Emezi keeps the proliferating plotlines together by the power of coincidence—a crucial set of keys appears at just the right time, as does a hidden wad of cash—which gives the story both the convolution and the pleasure of a soap opera. Readers in search of a decadent good time will find it here.
