My brother recommended this book after seeing it listed as one of the best of 2013 in The Economist. Given the publication, I anticipated a heavy read with global implications. The novel was not as weighty as I would have expected from The Economist staff, but it certainly introduced some thought-provoking issues. The book opens with the death of Kweku Sai, a renown surgeon. His children gather in Ghana bringing with them the baggage weighing down the relationships as children, siblings, and as a family. The book is the story of modern families - how we each establish our own identities as individuals and necessarily in relation to others - and how we hide the darkest secrets from those we purport to care the most about. I found some of the secrets kept by each of the characters a little too much, but overall, I liked the moving pieces in this book - getting to know each of the characters, learning more than each of the other characters knows about the other. The author tried, I thought, to be too enigmatic and clever at times, but all in all an interesting read set in a country I could stand to learn more about.
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