“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in Walden. If you’re in search of quiet desperation in modern-day America, you’d be hard-pressed for a greater place to search out it than the “dubiously named” Oasis Mobile Estates in Riverside County, California, the setting of Asale Angel-Ajani’s debut novel, A Country You Can Leave.
Russian-born single mother Yevgenia Borislava and her Afro-Cuban daughter, Lara, have alighted on this repository of damaged desires, the newest in a string of momentary addresses the 2 have occupied for all of Lara’s life. At 16, Lara finds herself on the awkward cusp of maturity, a scenario that’s tough sufficient with out her strained relationship with Yevgenia and her craving for a long-absent father whom she is aware of solely by way of her mom’s presumably unreliable tales.
On prime of that, Lara’s financial scenario is introduced into excessive aid as a result of a zoning mistake that lands her in a highschool supposed for the close by gated neighborhood that, economically talking, would possibly as nicely be on one other planet. At faculty, Lara surrounds herself with a small various group that features a homosexual Black aspiring poet named Charles and a compulsive white shoplifter named Julie, each of whom discover Yevgenia extra fascinating—or a minimum of much less embarrassing—than Lara does.
For most of the novel, readers are handled to the passive-aggressive back-and-forth between a mom and daughter who haven’t fairly discovered a wholesome approach to categorical their devotion to at least one one other, till a violent altercation with an outsider turns into the crucible through which their relationship will both be cast or splinter irrevocably.
Angel-Ajani’s unflinching portrait of this hypernuclear household is fascinating and sophisticated, with a richly drawn supporting solid and occasional arch humor that leavens the intensely emotional backdrop. A Country You Can Leave provides voice to a gaggle of star-crossed characters struggling to transcend Thoreau’s entice.
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