This always irks people like me and most of my generation, who grew up with easily-researchable information and a not-so-subtle contempt for religion. Transcendent Kingdom feels especially timely considering that everyday we see people who distrust science because they believe in religion. This is an incredible novel, definitely rather introspective than an actual story with a plot, but nevertheless I felt the emotional impact of every revelation about her past as if it had been a plot twist. As she explores her memories of her brother’s addiction, his inability to stop, and his eventual death, as well as her mom’s severe depression that followed, we examine her relationship with the religion she grew up with, the faith she lost and still misses, her complicated family and the person she became to avoid ever falling to addiction. Transcendent Kingdom tells the story of our main character, Gifty, a neuroscientist struggling to write her paper on her work about reward-seeking and restraint behavior on mice. I am happy to say that I was quite wrong.
The premise of the story made me think this was not really for me, and I probably pictured this book being quite preach-y and a bit corny. I don’t think I would have picked this up if it had not been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year and if I had not seen many positive reviews for it by bloggers I trust. Tracing her family’s story through continents and generations will take her deep into the dark heart of modern America. But when her mother comes to stay, Gifty soon learns that the roots of their tangled traumas reach farther than she ever thought.
Years later, desperate to understand the opioid addiction that destroyed her brother’s life, she turns to science for answers. When her father and brother succumb to the hard reality of immigrant life in the American South, their family of four becomes two – and the life Gifty dreamed of slips away.
Synopsis: As a child Gifty would ask her parents to tell the story of their journey from Ghana to Alabama, seeking escape in myths of heroism and romance.
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