Andrew AsibongRecensioni

An essential read for dwellers in dystopia and lovers of zombies, truth, lyricism and the Western pop canon (so that's most of us...) Mameluke Bath is deeply frightening and deeply human. Christie's over-articulate fury and bristling vulnerability make her a travelling companion whom this reader missed once her train finally pulled into its mysterious destination, and who remains in the mind long afterwards.

A brilliantly inventive book, and one that is simultaneously riotously funny and deeply serious - a perfect combination. Recommended for anyone who likes to be both entertained and to be forced to use their brain when reading.

While I can appreciate the author's writing, unfortunately I did not enjoy this book. It's taken me two years to read it - I tried repeatedly but couldn't get through the first chapter. I eventually made myself read it, but I found the book confusing and not engaging. I found I couldn't follow any sort of a plot and I didn't sympathise with the characters.

This book is impossible to describe. Asibong throws so many elements into this novella, that it is tough to read in spots, but his willingness to experiment keeps this form being a 1 star read. It especially took awhile to get used to the second person chapters. Plus, some of the ideas seemed too British for me to fully comprehend.

I received a review copy of this book quite some time ago. I have tried to read it several times and have just not been able to get into it. I'm not sure if it's the genre or something else. I don't want to leave a totally negative/unhelpful review, so I will point out that the author has a creative imagination and does a great job sharing it. The attempts I did make allowed me to see a great deal of imagery.

This book was not my cup of tea, to be honest. I got it as an Early Reviewer for LibraryThing, and would probably not have read it otherwise. It opened my eyes to a new universe, but this was not a universe I was glad to get acquainted with. Zombies and gore might be fun for some people, but not for me. I wasn’t able to root for the heroine, she came across as wimpy and confused. The other characteres seemed in general exaggerated into the extreme - they turned out more like cartoon figures than real people. The language was, in my taste, overloaded by adjectives, verbose and pretentious. The plot seemed unclear and muddy. I think the author has a project that is bigger than the novel manages to hold.
I really wanted to be able to say something positive about this book, but I find it hard. It might be that my personal aversion for this genre of literature is too strong, and that other readers might get a lot of enjoyment from this book.

This book is fast-paced with idiosyncratic characters. It's not boring. There is a lively, poetic language, surprising plot events, and many interesting elements. What is the deal about feeding lice anyway? That said, my sensibilities were offended by crude language, raw description of unpleasantness, and a very jerky way of writing transitions. The result was that I felt disoriented and uncomfortable the whole time I was reading. I stopped reading before I was a third of the way through. It was too uncomfortable for me to read. I tried three times over the course of about five weeks, and just couldn't stand the use of language and very abrupt style.

Book Info: Genre: Literary Fiction
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: People who like deep stories exploring dark ideas
Trigger Warnings: abuse of immigrants and minorities, (essentially) slavery, sweatshops, child abuse and neglect, murder

My Thoughts: I don't even know where to begin with this one. My rating is not about the quality of the book. This book is very well-written, almost lyrical at times. My rating is based upon the fact that this just isn't the sort of book I like. It turned out to be different from what I expected. I had hoped for a magical reality or fantasy and instead this is dark realism, very harsh, very ugly world in which asylum-seekers in England are essentially enslaved and treated like subhumans. It will probably enrage a lot of people to think of these sorts of abuses.

Another reason I didn't enjoy the book more was that I found Christie to be unbearably annoying. She has a bad attitude, a bad temper, treats everyone around her like dirt, and constantly complains about how unfair life is. The only character in this book that I didn't intensely dislike was Damon aka Diamond, and many of his sections are first-person, present-tense stream-of-consciousness, so somewhat hard to read. However, obviously the characters are well-defined and developed, because you cannot dislike someone who don't understand, right?

Also, the last two chapters of this book are the same. That is, the chapter simply repeats. I have no idea why it is like that, I assume it is some sort of error. It appears that it is the last chapter of the book, so I was able to read the whole thing; it was just weird to have that extra, duplicate chapter slapped on.

So, if this all sounds like something you would be interested in, check this book out.

Disclosure: I received an e-book ARC from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Synopsis: Mameluke Bath is the bizarre story of Christie Smithkin, a 39-year-old misfit, misanthrope and virgin, who lives in the nightmarish English city of St Pauly.

Friendless, paranoid, and lacking the funds she needs for the completion of her PhD thesis, mixed-race Christie’s only hope lies in a new ‘asylum-seeker mentoring’ scheme for which she has recently volunteered as a mentor. Offering guidance to recently-arrived African refugees fleeing torture will, she prays, provide her with a sense of social purpose and perhaps even emotional connection.

Christie’s plan goes awry when she discovers that Mukelenge, her Congolese mentee, has already been assigned a mentor: Damon, a cheerful, vapid, white male nurse. Worse still, Mukelenge is settling into urban East Midlands society with unnerving confidence and poise. Piqued by the immigrant’s miraculous feats of integration, Christie becomes uncontrollably jealous when she realises that Mukelenge is also casting a spell of seduction over the handsome, doll-like Damon.

Christie’s determination to solve the mystery of Mukelenge’s identity, to rescue Damon from the real or imagined horrors of a zombie-factory deep in the woods, and to come to terms with her own terrifying childhood, will hurtle all three protagonists towards a macabre conclusion in the nearby spa town of Mameluke Bath.

First, I must say that I received this book as a LibraryThing Member giveaway.
I enjoyed the language use in this book and how it becomes part of the story. However, I found the story at times to bitter and depressing, and it was hard to keep reading. However, I found the effort of reading through till the end quite rewarding.

At times acerbic, at times gentle, and frequently quite disturbing, Andrew Asibong’s ‘Mameluke Bath’ is an impressive debut. Blending cynicism with compassion, it unravels at a steady pace, but with effective hints of what’s to come. Within eight pages, desperate Christie Smithkin, the 39-year-old misfit academic, has promised her slimy supervising professor that, in order to retain her place at university, she is even prepared to ‘feed the lice’, a creepily alluring phrase if ever I read one.

What really marks this novel out for me, though, is the skilful use of references to pop music throughout. Though younger readers will struggle to get many of the allusions, for someone of my age (46 and counting) it’s filled to the brim with intertextual goodness. Sometimes the references are designed to do nothing more (or less) than add an entertainingly ironic edge to the narrative, but they’re also often politically pointed and incredibly smart. Take the scene, for example, in which naked anarchists are singing in a rainstorm, ‘exhorting old Maggie to wake up (because) they think they have something to say to her’, with its subtly conjured image of a despised prime minister ripped from the grave.

Elsewhere in the book, the imagery is not so much subtly conjured as (very) graphically described, and that’s not going to be to everyone’s taste. But I enjoyed ‘Mameluke Bath’ very much - it’s intelligent, though rarely too clever for its own good, and it announces Asibong as a sweet and tender hooligan of a novelist. I look forward to seeing more of his work.

I just want to say I did enjoy reading this story, but.... it's very confusing at times. The main character is Christie, a 39-year old woman who is trying to complete a thesis of some kind, and volunteers as a mentor through a mentoring program in hopes that it will give her some social experience. Christie's character comes across as much younger, the way she thinks of things and reacts to certain situations is why I feel this way. You would think that at 39 years old one would be less inclined to fly into fits of jealousy and act in an immature manner. This is the only problem I had with the story. I thoroughly enjoyed the authors style of writing, it comes across as very detailed and organized. The story itself is very well developed and easy to follow, I believe it is written in a way as to only let the reader know little tidbits of information at a time, so when the reader makes it to the end of the story they are completely blown away. This is actually what made me want to keep reading to find out what was really happening. I loved the fact that zombies were mentioned(lol) Overall this was an interesting and unique story, with tons of detail involved. Great reading experience!!!

I enjoyed this book. The charecters were different from other stories that I have read, which I find refreshing. I hope to read more by this author.

The author writes shows great attention to detail and the scenes described wonderfully. Andrew Asibong is creative and I like the style of his writing. I read the book more than once and I found it very difficult to follow the story. I'm still not really sure what happened. It may be my fault because I missed something. In that case the fault may be my own. It is a book worth reading.
I received this book for free in exchange for this honest review

Clever in its story-telling-- in that as freaky and confusing as it was, it was a good set up for keeping the reader reading. Interesting characters-- I liked Mukelenge... the only thing for me was (which I should've paid attention to) the genre of the book was not particularly my kind of book. :)½

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The author combines complexity, humor and scary realism - all with a great imagery that makes you see the book come to life.

To be perfectly honest, the character of Christie is not only immature, but also incredibly confused. Throughout the book, I felt like hitting her over the head or wish that I could have her carted off to the nearest mental institution. Either that or just end the whole thing by flinging the book aside. I am sorry to say that I did not like this book at all.

I am not saying that no one will ever find the book good or enjoyable. My review is simply my personal opinion.

I'm up to page 28 and finding it difficult to believe that the main character is forty years old, I think it would be much better if she was written as being in her early twenties because she seems so anxious and immature. The pace is kind of frantic and wandering. I'll keep going and possibly edit this as I get further.