Nudibranch

Transformations, turning points and trajectories.

This short story collection is populated by Grace Jones impersonators, sea goddesses and time-hopping vagrants. Characters reinvent themselves (Grace Jones and Komza Bright Morning), they grapple with situations not of their making (the loss or absence of a child is a recurring theme), and they find themselves at turning points, recognising, too late, the trajectories they might have taken (Kookaburra Sweet and Cornutopia).

The collection opens with the incantatory Logarithm serving to place the reader in the world of Nudibranch. Here, the ordinary meets the fantastic, the familiar is defamiliarized and natural phenomena are celebrated.

Okojie’s writing is multifaceted: earthy, baroque, brutal and rhapsodic. She paints striking images which prize open the reader’s mind. The language is a marvellous symphony of sound and ideas. Her prose rewards careful reading.

Striking and extraordinary.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK, for the ARC.

A wonderful collection of stories - different to each other but all dazzling. this is the first I've read Okojie but it won't be the last; if Nudibranch is anything to go by, she will have a long and fruitful career ahead of her and I can't wait to read everything she writes.