DevCareer BookClub: A Review of Chimeka Garricks’s A Broken People’s Playlist

NOBODY IS PERFECT, YET THE MOST PERFECTIONS CAN BE FOUND IN THIS RAWLY COMPELLING PLAYLIST OF BROKENNESS. YES, BROKENNESS. AS FAR AS ANTHOLOGIES GO, THIS ONE OF THE MOST DARING AND GLARINGLY BROKEN BOOKS YOU WILL HAVE THE FORUTNE TO READ. THE BOOK WAS NOT DESIGNED TO STROKE ONES EGO, RATHER TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU MAY ALREADY KNOW ABOUT LIFE SITUATIONS IN A UNIQUE WAY, WITH A SONG TRACK TO TAKE YOU THERE AND LEAVE YOU WONDERING WHO THE SONG WAS MADE FOR — THE CHAPTER OR THE SINGER’S FANS?

If you want to keep up with Nigerian flavored contemporary literature, walk with Garricks through a world of characters telling their own stories in the second person. A little unexpected, it is not dissimilar to stepping into different spots in different pools at different times of the day — a new experience each time. It hits closer to reality than most other stories in its own way.

The book is about the different souls who inhabit that fictional mirror of that place Garricks grew up in, Port Harcourt, and yet we can feel through them as if we have lived their lives with them. They ache the way we do and live joyfully the way we do at times. Their resilience takes us through each chapter wondering what the next thing could be, and if we feel it resonate with our souls.

What Makes This Book Tick?

There is nothing stopping us from talking about anything and everything in this book, and the tracks have nothing on it. From the ravishing ménage à trois spearheaded by TTs father and Ms. Ukor, to the macho police officer who races us through the takedown of a delinquent, a beeline to the man named Buddha facing what he believes to be an invisible blow from the wife he has been cheating on, heart wrenching miscarriages and haunting abortions to redemption, the reality of cancer and life and death, love in its many permutations and desecrations, the intertwining of the characters in different stories as the legendary Tonse looks on with a devious smirk, the looping dances of infidelity, religion and the lack of it, the confraternity epidemic — everything broken and a song to down it with.

This is a book you can sit and smile at, cry heartfelt tears about or wonder what is going on in the psyche of all the characters. A happy ending or a sad one could be a broken tale — something that we cannot seem to wrap our heads around. If Goth were a book, this is its Nigerian persona.

Despite the brazen faultiness it centers on narrating, it is the life we all live in various shades at one time or the other that we see within it:

• The joy we share with others and the joy within
• It is the tears we try to hide
• The evil we think we have covered up from external eyes
• The shame we conceal
• The love we so passionately betray
• The grief we serve ourselves
• The hurt we deal to others
• The lies we tell so that we can be happy and others can be, too
• The unrelenting drive that we carry within us, that we do not know we have until we are broken

No matter how invincible you are, there is a story that will hit you where you did not even know it hurts. We are all broken at some point and can relate to it, even when we have not experienced the exact brokenness being explained.

Message From the Tracks?

The frailty of humanity in each individual, and yet its invincible appearances are laid bare. In all the pieces, there are fragments of immense love, hope, redemption, revenge, penitence, patience and, strangely enough, a lot of laughter. Have a taste of them all in A Broken People’s Playlist.

Life comes in a lot of shapes and sizes, experiences and assumptions. The song of living never ends. Soldier on, do not give up.

Join me in my review next month. Whether it will be fiction or thoughtful fact, that is for the update.

See you soon.