Africa junction
By: Ginny Baily
Publisher: Harvill Secker
Published: 2011
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 278
ISBN-13: 9781846554605
Subjects: Female friendship; Fiction
Description: Adele is in a mess. On her own with her young son, struggling to cope with her job as a teacher, stuck in a disastrous affair, her life is unravelling. The sharp contrasts and certainties she experienced during the years she spent as a child in far-off Senegal have faded to a distant blur. One night, when she looks in the bathroom mirror, she sees the face of Ellena, a girl she knew in those carefree days, staring back at her from the glass. As the daughter of a nightwatchman in exile from the brutal conflict in Liberia, Ellena's childhood was far from the idyll of Adele's memories. Her mysterious appearance sets in motion a chain of events that takes Adele back to Africa, in the hope that she can make amends for a heartless act that broke the girls' friendship and damaged Ellena's family irrevocably. "Africa Junction" artfully interweaves the stories of dramatically different lives and experiences - a Senegalese boy setting sail for Europe, a Welsh teenager running from Timbuktu, a young girl escaping from a life of slave-labour in Mali - but at its heart is Adele and her quest. From Britain to Senegal and Liberia's civil war, "Africa Junction" follows a woman's attempt to get her life together. Out of violence and difficulty there emerges a vision of common humanity and the possibility of redemption and love.
Table of contents: title: - Adele is in a mess. On her own with her young son, struggling to cope with her job as a teacher, stuck in a disastrous affair, her life is unravelling. The sharp contrasts and certainties she experienced during the years she spent as a child in far-off Senegal have faded to a distant blur. One night, when she looks in the bathroom mirror, she sees the face of Ellena, a girl she knew in those carefree days, staring back at her from the glass. As the daughter of a nightwatchman in exile from the brutal conflict in Liberia, Ellena's childhood was far from the idyll of Adele's memories. Her mysterious appearance sets in motion a chain of events that takes Adele back to Africa, in the hope that she can make amends for a heartless act that broke the girls' friendship and damaged Ellena's family irrevocably. "Africa Junction" artfully interweaves the stories of dramatically different lives and experiences; title: a Senegalese boy setting sail for Europe, a Welsh teenager running from Timbuktu, a young girl escaping from a life of slave-labour in Mali; title: but at its heart is Adele and her quest. From Britain to Senegal and Liberia's civil war, "Africa Junction" follows a woman's attempt to get her life together. Out of violence and difficulty there emerges a vision of common humanity and the possibility of redemption and love.