Famished Road by Ben Okri

This was an extremely long novel, and I must say will not be to everyone's liking.  The quote on the book said, "It's not like anything you've ever read."  Ominous. If you are a fan of magical realism, you may like it.  I liked it for a little bit, but I'm not convinced that it needed to be more than 500 pages.  I did manage to finish the whole book, but I only accomplished that by reading it in bits on the train ride home.

I was getting very depressed with some of the other titles on the Booker list, particularly where the plot involved violence or abuse towards children.  This novel was very depressing, dealing with poverty in an unnamed post colonial country in Africa, and the main character constantly nearly dying.

The story is told in a dream sequence style, and begins before  the main character is born.  The main character, a boy named Azaro, is in the spirit world, and promises his spirit friends he will return to them shortly.  But after he is born and has lived for a bit, he decides he to stay in the world and live despite the abject poverty, first because of love for his parents, then eventually because he is fascinated by the beautiful and terrible things he sees in the world.

In general, I think I like magical realism in novels.  I certainly liked the novels from authors such as Isabel Allende.  But, I found myself getting a bit bored between the truly depressing parts of this particular novel.

Here's a link I found to someone else's review of the novel in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jan/20/booker-club-famished-road