Transcendent Kingdom
A novel (A Read with Jenna Pick)
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4.1 • 639 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! • Finalist for the WOMEN'S PRIZE
Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.
Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief—a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
When you fall in love with an author’s debut, you hope that their next book will give you even more cause to read everything they put out into the world. Transcendent Kingdom is very different from Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi’s astonishing epic about two branches of a family with roots in Ghana. Her second novel is a contemporary story about Gifty, a young woman who grapples with her tricky relationship to her Ghanian immigrant mother—and to the evangelical church that shaped her complicated upbringing in Huntsville, Alabama. Gyasi writes in a quiet, matter-of-fact style that reflects her neuroscientist heroine’s probing watchfulness about the tendencies of the human mind. We were powerfully drawn to Gifty’s story and her stunning revelations about family, grief, addiction, faith, and the ways in which we cling to belief and hope.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gyasi's meticulous, psychologically complex second novel (after Homegoing) examines the consequences of a Ghanian family's immigration to Huntsville, Ala. Gifty, the only member of the family born in the United States, is six years into a doctorate in neuroscience at Stanford, where she is attempting to see if she can alter the neural pathways leading to addiction and depression. Her project is motivated by the fate of her beloved older brother who died from a heroin overdose when she was in high school, and by the condition of her depressed mother, who is staying at Gifty's apartment. Though she now determinedly puts her faith in science, Gifty still feels the pull of her evangelical upbringing, and she struggles to reconcile the two opposing belief systems while juggling her dissertation and care for her mother, plus a growing attraction to her awkward lab mate. The narrative moves smoothly between the present and Gifty's childhood, with episodes such as a summer spent in Ghana with her aunt during a previous phase of her mother's depression rising in the background while Gifty works her way up in her field. Gyasi's constraint renders the emotional impact of the novel all the more powerful: her descriptions of the casual racism endured by the family, particularly at the hands of their nearly all-white church in Alabama, is more chilling for being so matter-of-fact. At once a vivid evocation of the immigrant experience and a sharp delineation of an individual's inner struggle, the novel brilliantly succeeds on both counts.
Customer Reviews
My main takeaway: The Mother
Main character is socially awkward and full of questions that she wants answers to ….but avoids answering all questions directed at her.
Her hard home life left her alone & unprepared when tragedy struck. The failings of a charismatic church plus her community left her hard-hearted, hurt and confused.
She is a workaholic that keeps people away from her heart. Some try to get to know her as a friend & intimately but she emotionally detaches herself and dives further into her work.
Her work about the science & the psychology of addicts were intriguing and written in a way that was straightforward without being too dry.
Now to her mother. This part of the story left me sobbing as a mothers heart would. Working long hours with no appreciation, only to be abandoned by her husband, and left to raise two children without any help or true friends. Then having to watch her child go from a focused, successful athlete to a violent stranger stealing from her via drug addiction (which he eventually died from) was too much for her to bare. My heart broke. Her heart broke & she went into a deep depression.
Not knowing how to press forward out of tragedy, or just simply not caring anymore, she gave up. She tried, she failed and she succumbed to the depression. She doesn’t take her own life, she just gave up & went numb …
… even though she had another child that desperately needed her.
Glad a bookclub I follow suggested this, it truly hurt my heart but shed light on the darkness that each family of an addict has to deal with. My (non-charismatic) heartfelt prayers towards all families in that similar situation.
Amazing
Such a great read!
Questions are essential
As soon as I finished the book that is the very first thought I had. Gifty the main character I feel is a trauma filled individual with boundless questions on a endless pursuit for answers. The book is a good read, enlightening in a way. There are only two things slightly off putting about it; one the beginning is a bit slow and boring, but as we delve more into Gifty and her relationship with her past it becomes a really beautiful tale. Two; the ending. I feel we didn’t see enough character development for Gifty. We did see enough of her changing and evolving, unlearning all her trauma responses. It just jumps to her living happily ever after. But all this said it’s still a good read that makes you ask some of the questions Gifty does, crave those same answers . Still very worth the read!