It was on 1st August, 2020, when the COVID-19-occasioned lockdown was at its peak in the country that a Catholic Spiritan priest, David Terna Pember and one of the editors of the anthology, Regina Achie Nege, decided to start an online book club that will meet monthly on Facebook to read and review some selected books. To encourage its members, cash prizes and certificates were instituted for both the reviews adjudged the best and the most active participants during the book discussions. The book club called the Ace Booksquare has since then read and reviewed tens of books, the latest (as of the time of this review) being Unoma Azuah’s Edible Bones. Voices from Ace Booksquare is a child of this book club, a collection of some of the reviews on some of the books read by members of the book club in the recent past.
Voices from Ace Booksquare is a collection of literary reviews of thirteen books written by twelve writers/critics. The books reviewed are of diverse nature: collections of short stories and poems, novellas and novels, children and young adults’ literature and even anthologies, all connected only by the nativity of the authors (and the critics) who come from the “Benue Valley.” In the introduction, the editors: Joshua Agbo, Frank Kyungun and Regina Achie Nege, celebrated it as “a bold announcement which marks the coming-of-age moment in which writers and critics from the Benue valley are writing to humanize themselves through their own stories.”
The collection is a slim book of only 72 pages yet a good start for anyone who is interested in the efforts of the Nigerian writers of the so-called Benue valley extraction, especially as it relates to its writers currently writing. It offers critical evaluations of their works in such a way the Readings in Literary Criticism series by George Allen and Unwin Limited did for such writers such as T.S Eliot, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, W.B Yeats, William Shakespeare and so many other writers whose works have been canonized, the major difference between the two books being that while the London’s George Allen and Unwin Limited series focused on the compilation of select critiques of the entire corpus of works of these globally acclaimed dead writers one at a time, Voices from Ace Booksquare turned its lens on the recent publications of contemporary Benue valley writers, established and otherwise. In this regard, the book is not just a study of the literary works of these largely unknown writers but also a platforming of them, an invitation into their arrangement of letters.
In the opening review, “Magical Realism in Kaase Fyanka’s The Golden Sword of Dragon,” Terese Uwuave, a postgraduate student at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria read the novel with a focus on its “author’s handling of the aesthetics of magical realism” a literary tradition Maggie Ann Bowers noted to be one “in which authors fuse the physical and supernatural worlds to form one new perspective.” To our reviewer, Fyanka’s The Golden Sword of Dragon qualifies as a commendable work of magical realism with such features as “a strong presence of the supernatural world that bears a striking resemblance to our physical world” and the blurring of boundaries between these two worlds. Uwuave therefore believes that this is a book worthy of admiration and being read; he is filled with praise for the book as shown in the concluding part of the review: “In this very commendable work of art, Fyanka has not only condemned the inordinate quest for power by African leaders and explored the mysterious relationship between man and his environment, he has also embraced a most demanding literary tradition that requires great skill and creativity. This places the author among notable practitioners of magical realism such as Okri, Morrison, Ngugi and Rushdie, among others.”
M’ember Utsaha, an education officer with the Benue State Teaching Service board reviews Igba Ogbole’s Arrows of Anguish calling it “a tale of hope.” Arrows of Anguish tells the tragic story of Oladam, “a rural community in Idomaland” which stands in for the North-Central area of Nigeria (and indeed, almost the whole of Nigeria) where terrorist and herdsmen attacks on farmers and the “absence of basic amenities such as good roads, standard healthcare facilities and educational institutions” is the default state of surviving. M’ember Utsaha insists that apart from the author’s “ample use of dialogue which helps with characterization and development of the themes,” the most beautiful thing about the book is the strength of its major characters: the character Adache whose love for his community, Oladam, led to sacrificing a lot to rid it of all these existential ills it suffers–a reminder that an inside-out rather than a messianic approach is what is needed to solve the myriads of problems besieging Nigeria–and the character Echeune, an honest lady who “says everything the way she sees it.”
Igba Ogbole’s “Rising from Grass to Grace” presents Samuel Anula’s Not My Wife rightly or wrongly so, as a Nollywood-esque tale of a fantastical movement from poverty to wealth. It’s a clichéd trope of a motherless child living with a father and a stepmother who is the Biblical description of Jezebel; the worn-out narrative of migrating from the village to Lagos where the forces of luck resides, waiting for people to make rich–a narrative that has left our cities, Lagos and Abuja especially, flooded by the mass of human bodies trying to please these forces of luck. In all the maltreatment meted upon Peter Namga, our protagonist in Not My Wife, Peter still managed to outperform in academics his step-siblings who had all the care and attention they needed. This became the earliest mark of Divine Providence in Peter’s life. The hand of God in his life would cause Bridget, Peter’s mother’s bosom friend to help him escape Mbayom community where his family stay. In a twist intended to be the anti-climax to the Divine Providence in Peter’s life, the escape mission was botched by a near-death incident of drowning. Such incidents of anti-climax pervades the novel: from Peter’s sudden loss of his rich foster parents, Captain Ede and Nancy, to the turbulence which the Youth Corps member, Mimi would bring to his family, a turbulence which led to: Peter’s wife cheating on him, a man’s death, the false murder accusation of Peter and his consequent imprisonment. Before then, like the child of destiny he was, Peter had returned to Mbayom, forgave “everyone who hurt him” and introduced his fiancée (who later became his wife) to his people. He had gotten, through the instrumentality of his late foster father’s friend, a job in a bank where he grew “rapidly to become one of the great shots there.” After then, his innocence would be proven and he would be released from the prison. In his always forgiving spirit, he would forgive his wife who had cheated on him, and like every grass-to-grace story you have read, everything would end in a happily ever after note.
While the reviewer had taken issues with the believability of “a few areas” of the book especially as it relates to the adoption of an abandoned Peter by an educated couple without them involving the appropriate authorities, the training of this child to adulthood without contacting the biological parents who they (likely) knew to be alive and some others, it took Iorkegh Donatus, in his modernist reading of the same book, to point out the clichéd nature of the book. This cliché story which he referred to as the “prototype narratives of orphaned children we are all used to,” he was quick to excuse arguing that the twists introduced by the author (referred to earlier as ‘anti-climax’ situations) makes the work an original work of fiction.
The two reviews–Donatus’ and Ogbole’s–come off as trying, desperately, to retrieve the lost; to glorify a clichéd trope for (in Iorkegh’s words) “its style of narration [that] shows that life is a complex of activities that do not happen in a single order.” They read as if written by critics who only want to see the good sides of the book so as to laud it. This reader does not find those reviews convincing, compelling or even honest.
Hope Idani in her review of Onwanyi Ilegede’s A Circle of Things Never Broken brings up the always recurring argument on the purpose of arts–aesthetics or social activism?–the ‘art for art’s sake’ argument. Unlike Regina Achie Nege who refused to take a definite stance on the subject in her review of Hope Idani’s Davidic Harp, Idani wasn’t afraid of taking a stance in the debate. For Idani, the poet is a crusader who while paying attention to aesthetics must also be socially, politically and morally conscious; the poet must be people-oriented for “a poet is more than simply an author; he is a visionary who has the ability to reveal the word’s hidden truth which most people do not see.”
Hope Idani’s review of A Circle bears a striking resemblance with Regina Achie Nege’s review of Idani’s Davidic Harp in their mission. While Idani wishes to “assess the poems in the collection [A Circle Never Broken] to see how the poet has balanced her handling of aesthetics with her themes,” Nege is out to appraise “the poems in the collection [Davidic Harp] from the viewpoints of commitment and aesthetics.” Idani and Nege both agreed that the books they reviewed are well balanced between those two extremes.
Though Nege refused to take a definite stance in the purpose of art debate, her assertion that “one cannot deny that poetry that is musical and pleasing to the ear and with a good dose of metaphors and imagery is the most engaging kind of poetry” is one I agree with. I also find her explication of the debate useful:
“The poet especially the contemporary Nigerian poet, sees her enterprise as that of putting words together, not just for the pleasure of doing so but for the pragmatic effect of such words on the reader/listeners […] It is perhaps for this reason that contemporary Nigerian poetry has received biting criticisms bordering on allegations of ‘artistic poverty’… Another school of critics argues that the criticism of contemporary Nigerian poetry as being too prosaic is based on Western parameters. Critics who hold this view argue that poetry is more about the depth of emotions expressed than sound devices.”
In “Reason and Imagination: Let Me Die Another Day,” Joshua Agbo, a lecturer in the Department of Languages and Linguistics in Benue State University reproduced his review of Regina Achie Nege’s debut collection of poetry, first released on the occasion of the book’s launch. Fused with humor notably drawn from one of Samuel Butler’s jokes, the review justifies its humorous nature by showing how the collection is a healing source of humor. “It is a poetry that cures with the power of humor.”
The review of Bernadette Nyam’s A Better Earth by Michael Ortserga is as environmentally conscious as the book being reviewed. The review shows the book as speaking to the current environmental hazards in the country. Lokoja, a city in Kogi State, Nigeria was recently flooded, with lots of people displaced from their homes. Anam in Anambra State is the same, a boat capsize making the flooding more fatal there. And so are some other areas in the country. This young-people-focused collection of stories on the environment with its moral lessons becomes therefore, a dire call to the young folks to secure their futures currently being damaged by the powers that be. The reviewer maintains that “…the author demonstrates her understanding that the life of a young person is tied to the life of society and that the survival of society is solely hinged on the survival of young people.”
Michael Ahundu in his own part reviews Hope Idani’s Breaking the Silence as a guide for parents, guardians and their wards for fighting against the evils of sexual harassment and the suffocating bags of silence such occurrences are placed into and sealed. Regina Achie Nege returns to reflect on the didactic nature of Paul Ugah’s children literature, The Holiday Camp, which she called a “Feast of lessons” for children while Queen Obekpa’s “Style and Content in Terna Abu’s Eagle Drive” extols the nonuse of the “traditional chronological movement of events,” the use of “lively humorous dialogues that is not aimless” and the use of language in the book. For Iorwuese Gogo, Ada Agada’s Intimations is “a poetry of yearnings: yearnings for love, yearnings for peace, and yearnings for eternal life.”
Regina Achie Nege, a PhD candidate in the Department of English, Benue State University, Makurdi has the most contribution to the collection. She uses her review of Leticia Nyitse’s edited New Short Stories from Nigeria to examine “Anthologies as Launchpad for New Writers.” “Anthologies have advantages for both readers and authors. For the authors, anthologies serve as a Launchpad for new writers who are published in an anthology alongside well known authors. The pull of the name of the established author might persuade the reader to pick a copy of the work and eventually read the pieces by the new authors in the publication. For the readers, the anthology as stated earlier, provides access to works by a wide variety of writers in a single book.”
If you read this particular review looking for an overview of the importance of anthologies to both writers and readers, you’ll find it; if your mission is to understand the difference between an anthology and a collection, you’ll have your knowledge base increased by the time you are done reading the review; if you are reading for a detailed analysis of the anthology’s opening short story, Ate Agera’s “A Befitting Burial,” its larger societal contextualization and even a brief history of the author’s career, you will live in the wonderful edifice this review has built with your expectations as well-furnished rooms in it. But never you make the mistake of reading this review as what its title claims, as a review of Leticia Nyitse’s New Short Stories from Nigeria, for you will find nothing of that sort in this review. This critic must therefore be questioned for her titling.
Simon Shachia Oryilla reviews the second anthology read in the collection, Seasons of Laurels and Thrills. In a well-written review, Oryilla focused on the social commitments and ideological preoccupations of the anthology published in 2020 to mark the fiftieth birthday anniversary of Barrister Onwanyi Ilegede. He is taken by the “celebration of fame; the effects of ageing and life transition; the value of love and romance; the need to protect humanity and sanctity of life; the agonies of rape victims and social stigma of teenage pregnancy; the quest for gender equality and an end to gender-based violence; the cost of war and the gains of peace; the destructive power of patriarchy and the emancipatory role of feminism,” themes of which the anthology was preoccupied with. He also used his review to extend the eulogies heaped upon the celebrant in whose honour the anthology was published. A reader of this review can only lament about one thing: the reviewer’s failure to engage the practice of celebratory compilation of creative works on an individual. Its merits and demerits, especially as it relates to memory and documentation of history, and the suggestion that such endeavors, in the cases of living individuals, are merely to massage the egos of some patrons and matrons and benefactors and never critically examine the legacies of the honored celebrant, like supposedly, festschrifts do.
For all its good intentions, Voices from Ace Booksquare is a flawed–of course, brilliantly and delicately so–collection of literary reviews. One of its major flaws is in its composition of the reviewing critics. The critics are from one tiny area in the mammoth Nigeria State. It may be argued by the editors that such a composition was unavoidable considering that the books reviewed were “Benue Valley Literature” which needed critics within this geographical and cultural setting who understand the settings and lived realities of the stories and their characters. Such an argument will be undermining the relevance of the so-called “Benue valley literature.” It would imply that the relevance of the books does not transcend the geographical and cultural experiences and limitations of the authors thereby being of no worth to readers outside of Benue State which I do not want to believe is the case. This restriction, sort of, of the reviewers gives the impression that the compilation is nothing more than a group of writers coming together to praise their works as one also notices that the list of authors whose works were reviewed is almost the same with the list of critics doing the reviews.
The collection might have as well passed off as a collection of reviews of books loved by the editors save for the fact that few of them do not read convincing enough; one can only be convinced that the reviewers are not convinced in their praise of the books. The fact that some of the reviews were submitted for a review-writing competition where the reviewer believes–rightly or wrongly so–that a positive review is needed of them if they are to win the prize might have influenced this.
One title in the Readings in Literary Criticism series (which I referred to earlier) that offers a collection of critics’ thoughts on selected legendary writers is Critics on T. S. Eliot edited by Sheila Sullivan and published in 1973. While the editor chose mainly the positive reviews, she did make attempts to, if not so much as to include the not-so-positive reviews, to refer to them in the collection, so as to enable diversified and well-informed discussions on the selected author. In the introduction, Sheila wrote: “For this book I have chosen extracts from writers who are in the main admirers of Eliot, for it seemed they had the most useful and perceptive things to say. But I have included a passage by D. S. Savage, who finds a serious falling off in the later poetry, and I should have liked to have had space to include the strictures and reservations of David Daiches, F.W. Bateson and Donald Davie, whose articles are listed in the Bibliography. Those who prefer a drop more vitriol with their criticisms should refer to Yvor Winter’s Anatomy of Nonsense and R. H. Robbins’s ‘The T.S. Eliot Myth.’” Anyone reading this sees a dedicated strive for objectivity in Sullivan’s collection, which save for some few reviews, cannot be shown to have been made in Voices from Ace Booksquare.
What then is brilliant and delicate in this collection? The collection is brilliantly flawed in a way that nothing is perfect. Any lover of literature and literary criticism will find it useful, if not for any other thing, then as a reference material (on Benue valley literature) for it delivered on the editors’ promise to expose to the reader “the power of critical analysis, the power of language, and the power of stories.”
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Voices from Ace Booksquare ends with an essay by Frank Kyungun, the executive secretary of the Benue State Teaching Service Board, titled “The Contribution of ANA-Benue to the Development of Literature in the State.” The essay, as the title suggests, highlights and praises the contributions of the Benue State chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors; their major contribution being the “association’s practice of publishing literary anthologies from time to time.”
In a country such as Nigeria where literary criticism is scoffed at, viewed with suspicions or approached only flippantly, even amongst the creative writers, this collection is a commendable project. It does for the Benue valley crop of writers what Regina Achie Nege wrote anthologies do for young writers: it offers meaningful and critical exposure. Reading the collection stoked in me an interest in some of the titles reviewed, especially Fyanka’s The Golden Sword of Dragon and Nege’s Let Me Die Another Day–which I was fortunate enough to receive a complimentary copy of. The editors are visionaries and must be celebrated. It is my sincere hope that Voices from Ace Booksquare becomes a series and is replicated in different literary scenes in the country. Benue valley writers have ignited the spark, let writers from the other valleys and mountains in Nigeria burn from it.
I also look forward to this being the spark that will lead to the compilation of critics’ views on books already canonized in the country, just like the George Allen and Unwin Limited’s. This review reaches its completion with a mention of its publisher, the Chapuga Publishers. Most of the titles in this collection–from A Circle Never Broken to Seasons of Laurels and Thrills to Let Me Die Another Day to Breaking the Silence to The Holiday Camp–have the imprint of this publisher. If the assumption that this collection is a reflection of the diverse talents and state of Benue valley literature holds, if the assumption that the editors of this collection were not commissioned or influenced by the publisher to ‘expose’ their titles also holds, then it’s safe to conclude that the Chapuga Publishers might be the most influential and the future of the Benue valley literature.
Ugochukwu Anadị is a student of the University of Nigeria. He is an avid reader who sometimes writes. His writings have appeared on: Afapinen, Afrocritik, Afritondo, ANA Review, Brittle Paper, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Con-scio magazine, Kalahari Review, The Shallow Tales Review amongst others. He also has a short story forthcoming in Isele Magazine.
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