'Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?' reviewed by Ignatius T. Mabasa in Zimbabwe's NewsHawks

 Reproduced from NewsHawks (thenewshawks.com), 6 October 2023 p.52, https://anyflip.com/ylrqu/jknb/

Title: Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?

Author: Bryony Rheam

Publisher: amaBooks/Parthian Books

Year: 2023

ISBN (Zimbabwe): 978-1-77931-095-8

ISBN (UK): 978-1-91459-514-1

Reviewed by Ignatius T. Mabasa

Whatever Happened to Rick Astley? is an unforgettable collection of stories that take you on an emotional roller coaster. Bryony Rheam is amazing in the way she is consistent in carefully crafting and sustaining the intensity of emotions in her stories. She does not just narrate a story but rather she becomes part of the story, as a keen observer who picks small but metaphorically rich actions and reactions, splashing colour here and there to make murals. And besides the colours, she wields a powerful hammer like the mythical Thor, and uses it to demolish façades in relationships, triggering mudslides of vulnerability and emotions, exposing complexities and fractured pieces of what appear to be good normal lives.

Rheam almost effortlessly but slyly uses irony in most of her stories. I particularly enjoyed the vividness with which she captures emotions and thought processes of her characters. She is a conscientious arranger of lines, sense, feeling and tone – coming up with a heavy, rich-smelling and fresh bouquet. 'The Colonel Comes By' exhibits the intense power and beauty that Rheam, like a gardener, uses to cut and arrange relationships, casting away some, and allowing them to wilt and be burnt. The metaphorical richness of the story – those errant flowers, the order and the effect we have on each other’s lives leading almost to death – is unforgettable, almost haunting. 

'Potholes' is another harrowing but beautifully told story. Although talking about a man’s strange relationship with potholes along a road that he has appropriated, the story is a well-executed commentary that centralises traumas of ordinary marginalised people of Zimbabwe against the socio-economic and political milieu. It brings out the raw creativity that is the hallmark of this talented storyteller. 'Potholes' is brilliantly metaphorical as 'Castles in the Air' is beautiful and multi-layered. 'Castles in the Air' appeals to readers in the way it suspends reality to allow the grotesque to take place, yet the reality has a stubborn way of disrupting the fantasy. This story is a shrewd creative tour, analysis and commentary on life and the state of things in Zimbabwe.

And I just loved 'The Piano Tuner', and how Rheam makes the reader respect the art of creative writing because of the patience and magic with which she lures the reader into her story. The mystery and suspense she weaves into the story – casting it against a background of racism, classism and unparalleled irony is stunning. Rheam is indeed what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o called “a writer in politics” – she exhibits brilliant awareness of class struggle, coloniality and the challenges of postcolonial Africa. 

If there is a theme that Rheam tackles so well, it is that of the passage of time, and the inevitability of change. 'Whatever Happened to Rick Astley?' is an ingenious multi-layered story that serves as a brilliant commentary on morphed relationships. There is a cyclic pattern in life, and Rheam shows how love comes and goes, and how we invest in new loves that are intrinsically anchored to the first love, even though they are completely separate.

Personally, as a Zimbabwean writer who mainly creates in my indigenous language, Rheam has helped me get a quick update of how white people are seeing, managing and documenting happenings in independent Zimbabwe. This is a very important voice in Zimbabwean literature. Through her sensitivity to race and class struggles she allows African readers to see white people struggling with the very same issues that also affect black people. The stories therefore become a window and an intercultural dialogue of some sort. 

Although I was a bit apprehensive that Rheam writes about detailed and complex relationships among Africans as she did in her story 'The Big Trip' – she managed to tear down the wall of my fears by writing in an amazingly convincing manner the type of politics usually found in African families – especially the strain on kinship due to living in a foreign land. She is not writing Africa – looking at it with imperial eyes. She has my respect.

Overall, Rheam’s biggest achievement is her ability to create and curate, as well as sincerely capture the soul of characters, places and relationships. Her characters are unforgettable. She respects the art of creative writing as can be observed in how she is not just for the story, but is able to experiment with form in a manner that only seasoned writers can do. She writes Africa in a sensitive manner – yes, like Doris Lessing.

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Dr. Ignatius T. Mabasa