A few weeks ago I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Ben Madison from Victoria Daily Photo!
Obviously Ben is an amazing photographer but he's also interesting in a number of other ways including the time he spent in Africa. He's written two books, the first one is a collection of short stories called The Moon's Fireflies. I haven't read this one. Yet.
He asked me if I would do a book review of his latest book Long Legs Boy and spread the word about it. He's not getting much local interest in his book - which I find surprising since Victoria is big on pushing everything local.
I jumped at the chance to do this! I also reminded him that I have about three people who read my blog...
I actually read the book a couple weeks ago and have been waiting for Brad to finish it. *
In short - I loved it! My only critique is that it starts out a little slow, but builds up to a great page turner!
It's the story of Modou, a 12 year boy who is orphaned when his parents die of AIDS. If that doesn't get you right there, he goes on to live and struggle through a life of poverty. This is shocking to us of course, but reality for a lot of people in Africa.
Ben is trying to describe how Africa** really is with the story of Modou. He' also showing us how the rest of the world sees Africa with newspaper articles inserted between chapters. These articles parallel the story and they also build up to the ending - which is awesome by the way.
So if you have a chance, read it. Do it.
* He loved it too. ***
**I say 'Africa' like it's one country - Ben is writing about his experiences in his travels through West Africa. The country in the book is fictional.
*** I'm not allowed to say anything more because he doesn't like it when I blog about him.
