14 Review: The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
The first impression of Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is that of a car spluttering on starting up. The first two chapters are descriptive to the point of fastidiousness, and the characters and incidents, although ordinary, are presented almost with affectation.
This doesn’t change. Obioma’s language aims to be as elaborate as possible. But as the ingenious plot unfolds, reading does become pleasant, interesting, and eventually engaging. Yet it’s difficult to shed that first impression.
The Fishermen is the story of four brothers (Ikenna, Boja, Obembe and Benjamin) whose lives are destroyed by an encounter with Abulu, a madman whose terrible prophecies of people in Akure, a city in south-western Nigeria where they live, have come to be held as true. The madman predicts that Ikenna will be killed by a “fisherman”, supposedly one of his brothers, since they have started going fishing on the nearby Omi-Ala river. In the absence of their father, who has moved away, and under the intangible but devastating influence of the madman, the family faces a destiny as grim as it seems unavoidable, as in the best traditions of tragedy.
The novel also openly refers to Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apartwhen proposing a comparison between Abulu as the brothers’ “enemy” and the white man that the character Okonkwo has to fight. In truth, the parallel hardly stands. The madman, although presented as dangerous, is only as threatening as superstition allows. Betraying the influence of yet another Nigerian writer, Amos Tutuola, Abulu is ascribed almost supernatural powers. But it is on a defenceless man that the brothers’ revenge ultimately falls, thus making the parallel with Okonkwo the more inappropriate.
This said, the impending doom is compellingly conveyed, rich with graphic detail and the extensive use of varied and sometimes beautiful similes and metaphors. Each chapter opens on a definition: the father (chapter three) is an “eagle”, the older brother (chapter four) is a “python”, and so on – an interesting choice that recalls storytelling techniques. The domino effect caused by the prophecy is accurately and forcefully described, tragedy falling hard upon tragedy. The picture that comes out of this is vivid, dark and haunting, the characters’ psychology undergoing passionate and subtle scrutiny.
But the novel is marred by improbability (like the idea of a mother struck by bereavement and madness making a recovery in just four months) and shows some surprising inconsistencies at rather crucial moments – there are continuity problems such as characters knowing things they hadn’t been told, for example.
It is in the second half of the novel that its weaknesses are at their most evident. Despite events that stride towards a powerful conclusion, the rhythm of the narration is slowed down by repetitions that are at times awkward, as when we learn that the father’s “map of dre