Plumbing the past of a late daughter’s life reveals more than was expected

‘An Unusual Grief’ by Yewande Omotoso

Cassava Republic Press

From the very first sentence, the reader is drawn in by the author's consummate sense of style and careful consideration of what she writes.

If you have not already latched on to her works, Yewande Omotoso is one to watch and wait for, to savour her words, which fall into well-constructed sentences and paragraphs, that create a sense of innate satisfaction in readers hungry for good literature.

Here is a story that is sadly all too common in its initial stages - Mojisola comes to Johannesburg to bury her young daughter Yinka. It is discovered that she took her own life - a daughter that ended a bright future all too abruptly. Yinka, who made her life away from Mojo and Titus her father, in the greedy city of Johannesburg, where her parents are ensconced.

We find that Moji and Titus are Nigerian and came south when the academic patriarch is offered a prestigious position that was impossible to refuse.

In Nigeria, as Omotoso so evocatively relates, there was a more intricate life than we may have imagined. Mojisola's lineage was not so straightforward as it was cut out to be; but although complicated, there was a fairly peaceful upbringing.

In writing about the death of Moji's daughter, the author recalls the past - pain juxtaposed with pleasures both great and small.

Yinka was never a straightforward girl but had a singular talent as a child for drawing - verging on the obsessive as she became almost trancelike in her mother's eyes.

Moji and Titus live the life of an academic couple in Nigeria, he somewhat distracted and distanced by his work and colleagues and she somewhat despairing of her dissonant and difficult relationship with her daughter.

Moji illustrates and studies plants and when the couple relocate to Cape Town it is a period punctuated by days of disillusionment. A quiet but growing sense of boredom ... tipping the very delicate balance of her life.

In Johannesburg, she moves into her daughter's apartment. In her difficult but determined attempt to unravel the reasons behind Yinka's death, an unlikely alliance forms between her and Yinka's landlady Zelda.They smoke dope together and dish out tempting slices of their lives, dangling them in front of each other and offering solace and sometimes advice.

Moji manages to crack the password to her daughter's laptop, thus uncovering a number of online sites in which Yinka dabbled in communicating with potential partners.

Perhaps predictably, Moji sets herself up to meet some of the contacts she discovers that made up her daughter's past. Each one is considered as a possible culprit in leading to Yinka's death and the reader is left wondering how and why.

The story takes a remarkably surprising turn when Mojisola meets up with one of Yinka's online suitors. Related unflinchingly, it is not only startling but to.the uninitiated, somewhat distasteful and disturbing.

Mojisola, as we find, is slowly shrinking from her former self as she boldly fits into the new shoes of a very different existence. One that is miles away from the sedate life she played as the wife of Titus -- he who cheated on her and, as she discovers, was consulting a therapist in attempting to discard his own demons.

A splendidly wrought book, thought provoking in the uncomfortable realities that it presents, related with a literary precision that makes one look anew at issues that are often pushed away into dark, deep corners.

* Yewande Omotoso is a South African-based novelist, architect and designer, who was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria. She is the daughter of Nigerian writer Kole Omotoso, and the sister of filmmaker Akin Omotoso. She has written several other highly-acclaimed novels and she currently lives in Johannesburg.