A Review of Michael Donkor’s “Housegirl”
Just Be
It is said that masterpieces teach you how to read them, and it could be said that Michael Donkor’s Housegirl — originally published in Great Britain as Hold — is a book that teaches you how to read it. Why? Because even though a good portion of it is set in London, England, the setting is seen through the eyes of a foreigner, making London into something of an alien world. However, one may pause at using the word “masterpiece.” As it stands, Housegirl is a rather incomplete, difficult and confusing read. It doesn’t reap subtle rewards while reading it in the way that reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children does. Instead, there’s a sense of lethargy in Housegirl, as if it is supposed to exist only because it exists, and, because of this, the novel comes across as being a little bit boring.
The book is about a young 17-year-old woman named Belinda who lives in Ghana and works for a wealthy family as a housekeeper. However, another set of Ghanaian parents stumble upon Belinda — also known as just Be — and figure she would be an appropriate role model for their troubled teenaged daughter. With that, Be is swept off to live in London to help set the daughter, named Amma, straight. In doing so, Be is leaving a lot behind, including a young, precocious 12-year-old girl named Mary who Belinda has become something of a mother figure for.
Throughout the book, secrets are revealed — one of them (minor spoiler) is that Be is the daughter of a prostitute — and tragedy is endured. It’s the tragedy that causes the book to gently unspool, as it takes over the last third of the novel at the expense of the connection the novel had made between two other characters. To that end, Housegirl feels incomplete. We are introduced to characters and situations, only to have them disappear — even though the novel’s very ending teases out some kind of return to them. Plus, despite the fact that bad things happen to some characters, the plot moves at a slow snail-meets-molasses speed, which means that it’s hard to get invested in any of these characters and situations. Housegirl is rather inert.
That’s not to say that there’s some good with the novel. Donker is a precise master of language, and he gets the colour and customs of those living in Ghana down pat. The language is marked with bits of local sayings that add flavor to the dialogue. What’s especially transcendent is the fact that you wouldn’t know Donkor was a man if you stripped anything identifying the author from the book. He gets what it is like to be a woman — let alone a woman of colour — down pat and right. There’s a sense of realism that Donkor brings to the table that helps the novel.
Still, most people don’t come to fiction expecting to be exposed to the hardships of reality — they are probably looking for more of an escape from it. That’s what makes Housegirl rather tough sledding for most of it. In keeping with the realism, Donkor doesn’t make easy connections between the characters, which may lead Western audiences to wonder if they are related in any way. There’s a reason for this, and that reason kind of gets teased out as the novel goes on, but it’s really hard to understand (at least, initially) how the characters relate to each other — which may make some readers wish that they had more of a historical understanding of Ghanaian culture and customs and how they work before reading this book. However, even that’s a double-edged sword of a criticism, as the novel would flounder in backstory with it.
So Housegirl then is a bit of a mediocre muddle of a puzzle to sort through. What’s particularly disappointing is a lesbian-plot angle is brought up at one point, and then it’s jettisoned for something else completely that happens to one of the characters. This could be Donkor’s way of gracefully backing out of an element that’s probably highly controversial in Ghanaian culture — homosexuality can get you killed in some African countries. (This is despite the fact that the character in question now resides in London.) Still, it would have done wonders for the plot to really come to something conclusive about this character’s grappling with sexuality, rather than switch gears and go to something else entirely.
In the end, Housegirl is a baffling concoction. It has a long reach, a long reach that reaches for greatness, but seems so muted and minor by the time the last page has been turned. This could have been an interesting cross-generational novel, but instead settles on being a coming-of-age novel for one character who doesn’t seem to have come of age much as she’s already so wise beyond her years in some ways. You might not be able to make much in the way of heads or tails with this book. It might be best read by those of Ghanaian descent, who might be able to appreciate the (little explained) cultural details more, which would explain why things happen the way they happen in this novel. Otherwise, something gets lost in translation, and the themes belonging to it — the lull of the homeland being one of them — go unexplained. Housegirl is only worth your time if you want to be challenged by a novel that spends too much time on a tragedy whose relationship to the main characters are not fully understood, and you want to feel rather unfulfilled after reading it. This is an interesting novel in some ways, but only just, and it ultimately, alas, disappoints.
Michael Donkor’s Housegirl was published by Picador on August 28, 2018.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
