Post 4

Someone please explain to me what the purpose of Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not being related is? I know I’ve already talked about this, but the two novels just don’t flow together at all. It seems to me as though Dangaremba’s purpose was to write two completely different anti-colonial novels, but was influenced to write a sequel to her first hit, and so combined her two novel ideas in The Book of Not. Surely it’s the author’s prerogative to write about whatever they see fit, and if people read it, then hey, they did their job, but really, the messages that I took from these novels are so different, and the tones so strange, that it isn’t something you typically see in a sequel. I know that Snehal loves Harry Potter, so I’ll throw this in: The change in tone from the 4th to 5th books in that series is similar to the change in Dangaremba, and since both shifts center around changing from a child to an adult and moving into an adult world that isn’t always kind, I can see that as a plot point for Dangaremba. But jeez, at least HP had a mostly happy ending. Does Tambu have any hope of the future she dreamed about in her garden? It doesn’t seem likely, which may motivate people to throw off the chains of oppression, but mostly, I think, disheartens the would-be activist far more that it encourages them.