EVERYTHING IS FINE HERE, debut novel of coming-of-age and coming out in queer-hostile Uganda

EVERYTHING IS FINE HERE
IRYN TUSHABE
House of Anansi Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A tender coming of age novel set in Uganda in which a young woman grapples with the truth about her sister in a country that punishes gay people.

Eighteen-year-old Aine Kamara has been anticipating a reunion with her older sister, Mbabazi, for months. But when Mbabazi shows up with an unexpected guest, Aine must confront an old her beloved sister is gay in a country with tight anti-homosexuality laws.

Over a weekend at Aine’s all girls’ boarding school, sisterly bonds strengthen, and a new friendship emerges between Aine and her sister’s partner, Achen. Later, a sudden death in the family brings Achen to Mbabazi’s and Aine’s home village, resulting in tensions that put Mrs. Kamara’s Christian beliefs to the test. She issues an ultimatum, forcing Mbabazi to make a difficult choice, but Aine must too. Unable to convince Mama to reconsider, Aine runs away to Mbabazi’s and Achen’s home in Kampala. There she reconnects with Elia, the sophomore at Makerere University she’s had a crush on for a while.

Acclaimed writer Iryn Tushabe’s dazzling debut novel, Everything Is Fine Here, explores the choice Aine must make, and its inevitable and harrowing results.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: How any parent, let alone one who has actually given birth, could reject their child to obey a bizarre (and demonstrably untrue) imaginary bully in the sky's idiotic rules is utterly beyond my ability to comprehend.It made this story one I could never fully commit to. In setting this dynamic at the center of several characters' awakenings, societal and personal, the author's veracious presentation of Mrs. Kamara's conflict between her religion and her love for her children left me out.

It isn't simply that I don't *like* it, this reality, the truth of many many families...some I've known quite well...is so alien to what I know of parenting and the love of a parent for a child that I quit believing the story's heart of truth. It *is* truth, I'm fully aware. I simply can't get over that utterly insane and viciously cruel behavior attributed to "moral" people, so I end up outside looking in.

That's why this powerful, beautifully written novel only gets 4 stars.

The love and the hope and the genuine human interlinking that is a family takes place among the people rejected by this vengeful god. I think if that as a powerful indictment of the belief system. The young women all seem to accept the reality of god while declining to accept the rules they're told are ordained by him. That resistance is delightful to me, and is expressed as a firm rejection of patriarchy: "...she'd read enough novels to suspect when patriarchy was disguising itself as romance," as I practically weep with jubilation.

A note to my more vocal women negative commenters: Logic and evidence dictate that honest men oppose patriarchy solely for its demonstrable and unconscionable wastefulness; self-preservation demands that gay men...I am one...oppose its procrustean dualistic insistence on a gender binary. That I benefit from it does not mean I must be blind to its evils and insensitive to its costs. Please stop DMing me about it. (This same attitude is applicable to my old white man's opposition to racism.)

The most fun I had reading this Uganda-set novel was its evocations of the life lived there, the backdrop of the natural world...not paraded in some weird tourist-trap way, rather that Aine (our PoV character) notices what is natural for her to notice. It's a solidly built world. It feels to me like I could get off a bus there and not feel culture shock because the rhythms and the ethos aren't completely unfamiliar after reading this story. That is some excellent writing, Author Tushabe.

A truly honest, very emotionally centered, coming-of-age and coming out story. One that is set in a world very hostile to women and to queer people. This is a gift to US readers from a place and at a time when understanding the costs and injustices of repression could not possibly be more important. Reading is, always, an act of resistance. Resist ignorance of what misogyny and homophobia deprive their human victims of.