BOOK REVIEW: A BROKEN PEOPLE’S PLAYLIST BY CHIMEKA GARRICKS.

We all are little broken humans; carrying fragments of grief, hurt, guilt, pain.

Ezioma Kalu.

BLURB

A Broken People’s Playlist is a collection of short stories with underlying themes so beautifully woven that each story flows into the other seamlessly. From its poignant beginning in “Lost Stars” a story about love and it’s fleeting, transient nature to the gritty, raw musical prose encapsulated in “In The City”, a tale of survival set in the alleyways of the waterside. A Broken People’s Playlist is a mosaic of stories about living, loving and hurting through very familiar sounds, in very familiar ways and finding healing in the most unlikely places.

The stories are also part-homage and part-love letter to Port Harcourt (the city which most of them are set in). The prose is distinctive as it is concise and unapologetically Nigerian. And because the collection is infused with the magic of evocative storytelling, everyone is promised a story, a character, to move or haunt them.

MY REVIEW

This collection of twelve sublime short stories, takes you by the hand and leads you to the world of the broken, men and women who are mourning losses, suffering from grief, recovering from lifelong traumas.
Inspired by twelve songs, Chimeka Garricks tells beautiful, yet touching stories that would make you feel all your emotions in extremities. One minute, you’re sobbing because a girl who chooses a friend as a fuck-buddy and never as a lover, suddenly realizes she loves him deeply, and it is too late, because she faces a tragedy that she would never recover from.
And the next, you’re pondering when it is ever done, for a man to throw his funeral party when he’s still alive.

They will ask me when I first knew I was in love with you. I will sign and say I don’t know. It happened in fragments, piece by piece, separate moments over the years. Moments – that’s how I remember it. They will be surprised when I say you are the only man I have ever loved.

Chimeka Garricks, A Broken People’s Playlist

Mostly set in Port Harcourt city, Garricks reveals the lives of young boys who would join a ‘confra’ in University, and a best friend who wouldn’t, couldn’t wriggle out of that chasm of grief, of losing his closest buddy.
This book is an amalgam of stories that tell tales of grief, of regrets, of broken dreams, of love, of mistakes, of family. Of a man who discovers his partial erectile dysfunction is his wife’s pattern of taming him, of a young boy whose tragedy is triggered by a compromising video seen on his phone.
Of an ambitious young boy, whose dreams of becoming a star is shattered, and who finds it difficult to adjust into the truth of knowing whom his true father was.

Then he slapped me. I was used to my father beating my mother. He did it almost with a nonchalance that came from regular practice and confidence in her perpetual surrender. But I am not my mother. I slapped Victor ― so hard, my wrist almost snapped and the pain volted up my arm.

Chimeka Garricks, A Broken People’s Playlist

Of an introvert, who cheats on his wife with a work colleague, and who realizes he might never be able to experience what true love means again, because that part of his wife which supplies him with enough doses of that, is dead and gone.
A broken people’s playlist is a book inspired by music, how songs have the power of healing, how they can save you the hassle of arguing with your wife, just by singing “Mammy Water,” by Victor Uwaifo.
In all, it’s a wonderful book and I enjoyed every bit of it. This book is a 5/5 for me.

Have you read the book? What do you feel about it? Please share your thoughts with me in the comment section. Don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, follow me on all social media platforms and share with your friends.
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