Transcendent Kingdom is a beautiful book examining the relationship that the protagonist GIfty has with God and religion through the passage of her life. Certain key moments drive the narrative with the death of her brother Nana and the resulting mental collapse of her mother sinking into depression. Gyasi examines the place of duty, conditioning and need as God and science are entwined in Gifty’s sense of self. As with her previous book Homegoing, Gyasi explores the immigrant experience and the disconnect between Africa and contemporary America, the choices that are made and past that is carried. Exquisitely written and delicately handled, Transcendent Kingdom is a joy and deserves to be widely read..

I absolutely adored this book, it was so different from Homegoing but still so brilliant. Yaa Gyasi is such a fantastic storyteller and I was so engrossed in Gifty's story from beginning to end. My favourite element of the writing in this book was the raw family dynamic between Gifty, her mother and her brother, Gyasi wove the different textures of family relationships together so intricately. It makes Gifty's determination to study and cure addiction and mental illness all the more heart-wrenching.

Overall, this book is absolutely fantastic and I would definitely recommend it!

I thoroughly enjoyed this moving and beautifully written story about the Ghanaian-American neuroscientist, Gifty and her family. There are interesting explorations of the tensions between belief in God and belief in science as well as emotional discussions around family, racism, depression and addiction.

Although the topics are big, the book did not feel weighed down with serious talking points, but moved through the story lightly and with humour. Like the author's previous book, Homegoing, the subjects are dealt with through personal experiences - "show, not tell".

A recommended read!

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Transcendent Kingdom is an absolute stunner of a book. It is quiet, it is reflective, it is questioning, and it is beautiful. There isn’t much plot, and there aren’t many characters, so if that’s what you like, skip this. Yet somehow, with all its gentleness and stillness, it’s impossible not to be wholly engrossed in Gyasi’s masterful and heartfelt account of a woman struggling to come to terms with the many strands of her life.

There is A Lot in this book. There’s too much to discuss in one small review. On the surface it’s a novel about a woman, Gifty, who loses her brother to a heroin overdose, and how that obliterated her family and her life. But there’s so much more. Her mother is suffering with severe and debilitating depression following the death of her son, and the role of mother and daughter seem to switch. Gifty grew up in church, always wanting to be perfect, but how can a God that is so good and to whom she has given so much allow her family to be destroyed in such a devastating way? How can these Christians be so racially prejudice and unsupportive of her brother and her family? How can the science that Gifty devotes her adult life to really answer questions of belief and spirituality with any sense of satisfaction? She struggles to find balance between the two.

These are just some of the themes that really resonated with me, but there are more as well. With so many themes in this novel, you wonder how it can possibly not just feel like there’s too much going on. How it doesn’t feel messy, disordered, chaotic. All I know is that it doesn’t - Gyasi’s writing is absolutely sublime, and it holds every thread together in perfect harmony, completely. It does jump around in time and theme a lot, but I never got lost, and I think it is a very clever and extremely skilled depiction of life in general. Life is not neat and tidy, and our problems and worries don’t just fit into one ‘issue’ box. There are so many questions, and Gyasi doesn’t shy away from that at all, and that is why I loved this book. It hits hard, and it’s uncomfortable sometimes but I haven’t read something so totally raw and honest for a long time. I’m sure I’ll still be thinking about it for months to come.

It took me a while to write a review for Transcendent Kingdom because it is a book that you need to sit with. I finished the book fairly quickly and thought it was a great read. But I realised that I couldn't stop thinking about it. The compelling prose, the expertly explored themes of religion and science, the depth of emotions conveyed. This book is a masterpiece.

Gifty is a neuroscientist at Stanford, studying reward-seeking behaviour in mice. Her research topic is fuelled by her need to find tangible answers following her brother's overdose and her mother's depression. The book interweaves the past and present beautifully. We see snippets of Gifty's childhood, the events surrounding her brother's death and the emotional aftermath, as well as the subsequent alienation from members of the Church. It was a slow unravelling of the path that led Gifty to her present-life in Stanford.

Gyasi's heart wrenching portrayal of grief in Transcendent Kingdom left me in awe. With her soft and quiet prose, I did not expect this book to evoke such visceral emotions from me, but it did. Grief is a complex emotion and Gyasi's nuanced exploration of it did it justice and then some. The tone of loss and despair throughout the book was punctuated with moments of lightness that kept this book from being overwhelmed with pain and suffering.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to everyone - frequent readers and non-readers alike. Gyasi's talent lies within bringing to life the stories of people who live in "in-between spaces", spaces where religion, culture and science intersect. Transcendent Kingdom is a book that will be impossible to forget.

*I rated it 4.5/5*

I did enjoy this book but it didn't captivate me like I thought and hoped it would, Gifty's journey was one to be appreciated whether you feel connected or not.

This was beautifully written and I hope that more people read this and enjoy her story. Thank you for giving me the pleasure of reading it.

Gifty, the protagonist of Yaa Gyasi’s second novel, Transcendent Kingdom, is both a neuroscience PhD student at Stanford who sought rigour in all things from an early age, and a grieving woman who is still deeply connected to her Ghanaian family’s Pentecostalism. As a child, she struggled with the command to ceaselessly praise God, soon discovering that she found it difficult to keep her mind on prayer for more than a few minutes; her teenage imagination was caught by the idea that ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God’ might actually be translated differently: ‘“Word” was translated from the Greek word Logos, which didn’t really mean “word” at all, but rather something closer to “plea” or even premise… In the beginning there was an idea, a premise; there was a question.’ Gifty’s research on reward-seeking behaviour in mice has obvious connections with the death of her older brother Nana from opioid addiction, but the novel avoids giving her this one simple motivation for her project; she explains that she was drawn to neuroscience because it seemed so hard and so pure, and is now grappling with the conflict between religious and scientific ideas of the brain, the mind and the soul.

From a white British perspective, fiction on the perceived conflict between religion and science has often tended to focus on the theory of evolution, and explored either the gentle accord that nineteenth-century men of science found between their faith and the evidence that the natural history of the world was much longer than they’d expected, or the later clashes with creationism. Transcendent Kingdom stands out in its depiction of Gifty’s Pentecostal faith, which, unlike Anglicanism/ Episcopalianism, focuses on personal divine revelation and speaking in tongues, and how she integrates her childhood beliefs with her neuroscientific work. (Creationism only comes up once, as an irritating question that non-believers ask her; she dodges it by spouting something one of her schoolteachers once said, ‘I believe we’re made of stardust, and God made the stars.’) This novel is so wise and thoughtful that there are endless bits I could quote, but I was especially struck by how Gifty turns to both scientific articles and biblical passages, not necessarily as sources of authority, but as things that are both good to think with.

This book is so thematically resonant that a lot of the reviews I’ve read make it sound intellectually worthy, but a bit dry; this isn’t the case at all. Gifty is a completely captivating narrator, ironically funny about her younger self, complex, unashamedly ambitious and yet deeply caring. Gyasi does not have time for any of the usual binaries that afflict female characters, and doesn’t let us think for a second that because Gifty wants to be a scientific star and does not want marriage or children, this means that she is in any way emotionally deficient. The novel is also technically brilliant in a very unobtrusive way; the narrative melts between present and past every few paragraphs, but I never felt at all confused about where or when we were. Indeed, it’s this clever juxtaposition that allows Gyasi to say so much without spelling anything out to the reader.

I never managed to love Gyasi’s acclaimed debut, Homegoing, as much as I wanted to; I admired its premise and construction, and connected with some of the stories, but felt a little distanced from the project as a whole. Transcendent Kingdom was a very different experience; I was completely pulled into Gifty’s world and Gifty’s questions. 4.5 stars.

A beautifully written novel on family, religion and addiction.

Gifty is a PhD candidate working on an experiment in neuroscience at Stanford University – specifically studying the “reward-seeking behaviour in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction”. We learn early on that her brother, Nana, a gifted high-school athlete, died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury led to him becoming addicted to OxyContin. This led to her mother entering a deep depression and in the present day has come to stay with Gifty at her apartment near Stanford.

When Homecoming was published, I remember hearing so much about Gyasi’s writing. I haven’t read that book yet but with Transcendent Kingdom, I now understand where all the praise comes from (and can’t wait to read her first novel for myself).

What really struck me with Transcendent Kingdom was the inclusion and significance of the science experiment, which is quite detailed at times. The way the author writes those scenes helps to give you a greater understanding and insight into the mindset of Gifty. You come to understand the importance of this project and her need to focus on it – it is the only thing she can control in her life. Perhaps this she can fix.

A heart-breaking read, as the book progresses, Gifty shares passages from her childhood journal and we see how the family were affected as Nana became addicted to drugs, and your heart aches for this little girl who can’t understand why her brother has changed so much. Why he’s become so angry. And so sad.

Religion is also a huge part of the family’s story. Ghanaian immigrants, their mother joins an evangelical church on arriving to America and it plays a central role in their life. Gifty’s faith as a child wanes as she enters adulthood but she longs as an adult to have that blind faith in anything and finds herself returning to it in search of answers to somehow ease her mother’s suffering and her own.

Honestly the book covers so many different themes, I could write about it all day. It’s a beautiful book that I’ll be thinking about for a long time to come. This is one definitely worth your time.

Transcendent Kingdom will be published by Penguin UK on Thursday, 4th March, 2021. My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance review copy in exchange for an honest review.

REVIEW: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Homegoing was arguably my favourite book I read in 2020 so I was both excited and apprehensive of reading Gyasi’s follow up. Rather than covering a wide expanse of characters as in her previous book this time we are treated to a detailed exploration of one character.

The daughter of Ghanaian parents in Alabama this tells the story of Gifty, and how her family of four becomes but two as her father and brother struggle with immigrant life in the American South. Then later her journey into science in a desperate bid to understand the opioid addiction that destroyed her brother's life and the depression that clouded her mother thereafter.

I was mesmerised by this book, easy reading it is not there are some heavy parts which Gyasi has written with such authenticity that I genuinely had to keep reminding myself this was a work of fiction and not a memoir. I was so invested I felt the raw, ugly pain Gifty experienced so strongly at one point I put it down to compose myself before I could continue.

There is so much covered in this book, again I have no idea how Gyasi has managed in within so few pages. The scientific detail included was astounding, I speak as a layperson but it is hard to believe Gyasi didn’t undertake this research and I particularly enjoyed the exploration and attempts to resolve her character’s conflict of faith versus science.

It was always going to be hard to follow up Homegoing and if I’m honest and had read both without knowledge of the author I would not have said it was the same person.

My advice is to all Homegoing fans read this with an open mind this is a completely different book but it is brilliant in it’s own way ❤️

Thank you to @netgalley and @vikingbooksuk @penguinukbooks for this ARC (I really did scream when this arrived in my inbox). Transcendent Kingdom is out 4th March 2021.

I loved Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing so I was so excited to read this.

Transcendent Kingdom is the story of Gifty, a doctorate student in California studying reward-seeking in rats. It’s about her mother, who came to America from Ghana, and her brother, Nana, who died of an overdose as a teenager.

This book is beautiful and incredibly moving and fascinating. I love the way it moves through time periods, sometimes midway through a page. All of the characters felt so real that I feel like I’m mourning them now it’s finished.

I absolutely adored this book, and I know it will definitely make it into my books of the year list.

5 stars

HOMEGOING was my top read of 2019, so I delay picking up TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM, anxious that it won't live up to its predecessor. Within only a few pages, I'm absorbed and my fears are put to rest.

TK follows Gifty, a brilliant neuroscientist and second generation Ghanaian immigrant living in Alabama who has dedicated her life to the exploration of who, what and why we are. In her search for meaning, Gifty looks to both her religious upbringing and her scientific career, all with the aim to better understand herself and her family's trauma.

In many ways, TK is entirely different from HOMEGOING - it is an inward-looking journey, introspective, melancholic, intense - yet it nonetheless continues to showcase Yaa Gyasi's skill as an observer of the human condition. In particular, I'm struck by the depiction of Gifty's relationship with her mother, that dissonance between thinking your mother is infallible and realising, time and time again, that she is a person like any other.

I'm usually bored by character-driven narratives, and little actually happens in TK: the bulk of the narrative is consumed by Gifty reminiscing over her childhood. Yet Gyasi writes with such skill and perception that I find myself rereading passages, savouring each word. In navigating her grief and love, Gifty transcends both science and religion to attempt to capture the human spirit.

My only quibble is that the ending feels abrupt, to the point that I reread it to be sure I hadn't missed something. I wasn't convinced at first, but now that I've had time to process, I quite like the ending. It leaves the readers with more questions than answers, which - as Gifty discovers - is exactly what life is like.

CW: Depression, addiction, overdose

READ THIS IF... You enjoyed HOMEGOING and/or because I'm telling you to.

Trascendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a while.

Gifty is the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, and she was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama. She loves her brother, Nana, very much. Nana is a gifted athlete in high school, and the pride of his town and Church. Nana dies of an overdose a few years after being prescribed OxyContin for an injury.

Trascendent Kingdom is the story of a woman that dedicates herself to figuring out how addiction works in the brain. This is the story of a woman that, after the death of her brother, tries to make sense of her community, of her church, of how being Black in the South affected her life. Most importantly, it’s the story of a woman who tries to deal with her brother’s death and feeling betrayed by God, and how religion and science coexist, within herself. Gifty goes through all the stages of emotions one feels when family member of an addict: pity, shame, compassion, love, and even hatred, and through her scientific work tries to figure out the answers to some of today’s biggest questions: what is addiction, why it affects some brains this way, and how can we treat it.

I found this book extremely powerful, and raw. It shows addiction for what it is, a disease, which is something I wasn’t fully able to grasp until recently. 
Yaa Gyasi’s writing is just so incredibly evocative, and I can’t wait to read more from her.

I once again fell in love with Yaa Gyasi's writing and capability to make me care so deeply for her characters. it was both a heartbreaking and hopeful story, talking about how depression and drug addiction can impact your life. it's about loving your family so much you can't imagine giving up on them even after their death.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

After absolutely loving Gyasi’s Homegoing, I was so keen to read this book! It totally lived up to expectations.

It was sensitively and beautifully written, confronting addiction and mental illness, whilst also reflecting on the disparity and connection between faith and science.

Gifty is an excellently portrayed protagonist. She is a strong, black woman in science, struggling with her sadness surrounding her brother’s addiction and her mother’s depression.

Gyasi writes so elegantly and beautifully, conveying the emotion of the characters, exploring the nuances and difficulties of dealing with addiction.

REVIEW: Yaa Gyasi's second novel is one of the most incredible bits of fiction I have read for some time. It follows a neuroscientist named Gifty. Her Ghana-born parents immigrated to the USA when she was small, and the novel deals with the struggles that follow as her parents try to settle in to life as Americans. As she grows up and becomes a scientist, she starts to wrestle with how complicated questions of faith and culture intersect with her education.

I have never read a novel that so beautifully captures the wonders and shortcomings of science without sounding overly philosophical or preachy. Gyasi unpacks for the reader how questions of death and humanity are unsatisfactorily answered by science and faith alike as Gifty struggles with grief, addiction, and familial obligation. I found this novel deeply moving and engaging; I don't think I have cried so much reading a book since I read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.

If you enjoyed @brandonlgtaylor's Real Life (which you should have it was bloody amazing), I strongly urge you to pick up this. It really is amazing - EASILY my book of the year so far.

Thanks to @penguinukbooks for the ARC. Transcendent Kingdom is out on 4 March in the UK (and I believe it's out most places already).

I had very high expectations for this one going in, with the hype that it’s had so far but also for the hype and love that Homegoing received. I expected it to be a challenging read, because of my assumptions of Homegoing (which is still on my tbr), but it was easy to read, with some really powerful messages. Gyasi really knows how to make a character seem real, on a few occasions I checked to see if it was actually a memoir because the insights and thoughts that Gifty shared throughout are so fitting to her character and her story. How she felt and experienced her brothers addiction and mothers mental illness, her internal (and sometimes external) science v religion debate, all make the character relatable to the point of being a real person.

The story line was really fitting for the book and I truly enjoyed every aspect of it. I was definitely not disappointed with my first Gyasi novel, so Homegoing, I’m coming for you next!

Transcendent Kingdom is told through the eyes of Gifty, a Ghanaian-American PhD student studying the neural circuits of depression and addiction at Standford. The novel centres on Gifty, but also focuses on her Ghanaian roots, and addresses the many struggles her family were faced with, which ultimately shaped her into who she is today. From her brothers addiction to opioid drugs, to her mothers struggles with depression, the book addresses the impacts of mental illness and addiction can have on not only the individual, but on the family as a whole.

I was so profoundly affected by this novel and could truly resonate with some of the themes discussed. I have never read something which looks so deeply into the causes of depression and addiction with such honesty and sensitivity before. The writing felt so raw that I repeatedly questioned whether I was reading a memoir of Yaa’s life. I loved the fact that our protagonist was a black female scientist, as that is so rarely explored in novels today.

This was my first introduction into Yaa’s beautiful writing and it certainly will not be the last. Her writing is truly a gift that needs to be shared and I cannot wait to see what she brings out next

This was unlike any other story I’ve read before! In Transcendent Kingdom, we follow protagonist Gifty as she navigates her successful work in an scientific environment, and learn about her brother, mother and her relationship with God. I found it to be a slow-paced read, but so incredibly intriguing all the way through. Gifty’s struggle with her faith vs. what she knows to be true through the basis of science and evolution was really fascinating, and although some of the religious language was a little heavy at times, it was throughly enjoyable. Her relationship with her mother is very unique, and totally heartbreaking at times, The story also delves into her brother’s struggle with addiction, and places a heavy focus on the psychology of addiction and how it affects the brain, Deeply moving, super fascinating and insightful read.

This is a new favorite book for me! Transcendent Kingdom is a beautifully written depiction of family and mental health. I absolutely loved Yaa Gyasi's writing in this novel, even moreso than in her debut, Homegoing. I enjoyed the scientific aspects when working on lab rats and the fact that Gifty is a smart, strong and driven protagonist. I adored this book and would highly recommend the audiobook as well. The narrator is amazing!

“If I've thought of my mother as callous, and many times I have, then it is important to remember what a callus is: the hardened tissue that forms over a wound.”

I will be honest that I had no idea what the synopsis of this book was before diving in, I have seen so much praise for Homegoing (I need to read ASAP) that I decided to just trust Gyasi and see what this one was all about. All I can say is that this novel is so, SO good!

I found this story to be a true journey, told from multiple timelines all unfurling steadily & tying together beautifully allowing the reader to put all the pieces together painting a picture of this American-Ghanian family and their struggles. Gifty is our narrator, a Neurology PhD candidate focussing on reward seeking tendencies in mice and it very quickly becomes clear that her field of study stems from a personal need for understanding the neurological aspects addiction. I have never personally had much of an interest in science and tend to find that my mind wander in novels that delve into it, however Gyasi’s prose is magnificent and my interest was peeked as I found myself wanting to understand more!

At times it reads as if it were a memoir, covering many themes ranging from addition, grief, depression, religion, racism, favouritism, societal pressures, a brief glimpse on sexuality and a complex mother-daughter relationship. As it unfolds, we are transported back to Gifty’s younger years and watch her grow up via journal entries and chapters, Gyasi does an incredible job of dissecting this family, their issues, their profound love for each other (barring the Chin Chin man - read & you will know) and the events in the wake of a tragic loss. I must add that I especially adored the incredible bond that Gifty & Nana shared.

Personally, this novel really resonated with - as someone who has recently experienced grief & in younger years has had to cope with family suffering from addiction & depression, the pressure regarding religion - I found Gyasi tackled these difficult subject matters with grace & left me feeling somewhat understood and not alone.

Gyasi has cemented herself as a favourite author of mine & I would highly recommend this exquisite novel (a few TW’s to be mindful of) for anyone looking to diversify their reading further. I truly felt as if I learnt a great deal & am very much looking forward to picking up HG & her future works.

A very big thank you to Viking Books/Penguin Books UK & Netgally for the gifted e-arc in exchange for an honest review. Out March 4th in the UK