Reviews

Bush Meat, which won the New Welsh Writing Awards 2016, is a finely balanced collection of short stories that travels between Nigeria and England, from the 1960s to the present day. Each story stands alone; together they form a subtle family history that tracks some of the significant social and cultural shifts that have taken place over the past fifty years. Mandy Sutter’s expats in Africa are not the stereotypical upper-class, or wannabe-upper-class, migrants of Empire, shored up by an aggressive sense of superiority; they are ‘ordinary’ people – teachers, engineers and manual workers, and the wives and children who sometimes accompany them. They are working people dislocated, full of uncertainty in a country they do not understand and no longer rule. ‘I don’t know what to do. The rules are different here.’ The men might occasionally come up with some of the old bluster – ‘The trouble with this country is the black man thinks he owns it’ – but this is the newly independent Nigeria of Chinua Achebe; the balance is shifting; these migrants are ‘just another mzungu passing through’. Their time there will have little impact on the country, but they will carry it with them for the rest of their lives, in memories and keepsakes and shattered selves who fail to make the readjustment to returning home to England, to working in offices and living in drab new-build boxes on suburban cul-de-sacs, leaving the colour and vibrancy of Africa behind them. The stories centre on Sarah and her parents, Jim and Maureen, who move to Nigeria in the 1960s when Sarah is a child. Sutter is strong on generational and gender-based differences in attitude. While Sarah embraces her new world and accepts the servant Chidike and his pet monkey as friends, and regularly spends time in the home of her schoolfriend Omo, Jim holds to the fear of Otherness. Maureen bridges the gap, constantly questioning, ever uncertain. And yet, when they return to England, it is Jim who seeks to take Africa with him – a crate made of beautiful iroko wood, packed with carvings, tables, pots and trays that he cannot bear to part with. The stories towards the end of the collection, which portray Jim in later life, are especially moving. British culture of the 1960s is brought to life here: Crossroads, Top of the Pops and Dixon of Dock Green, free school milk, beehives and winged spectacles, and green chenille tablecloths; children’s hands rapped with a ruler, board rubbers thrown at children’s heads, the absolute veto on any discussion of sex or death or things that matter. Things might be changing in Britain but, as expats in Africa, the men work; their wives spend their time sewing, mending, keeping house, instructing servants and looking after children; children mostly keep their heads down and their mouths shut and have a lot of secrets. It’s a world a million miles away and yet only yesterday. Sutter captures it in aspic. Bush Meat is a sensitive, haunting collection that sets personal stories against a background of historical change. It is thoughtful and perceptive. And a real joy to read.
*Suzy Ceulan Hughes @ www.gwales.com*