Official Review: Kiss of a Black Woman by Matthew Ojoduma

[mcs1040]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Kiss of a Black Woman" by Matthew Ojoduma.]

Kiss of a Black Woman by Matthew Ojoduma is the story of Thuli, a South African woman of pleasure who wants to get her life straight.

The first thing that hit me with this book was its length: rather the length of a novella than a novel. Well, I said to myself, it better be good of it is so short. Only it wasn’t. And I was grateful for its length because I could get quicker through it and spare myself too much pain.

The second thing was the huge amount of spelling mistakes, typos, punctuation errors and poor grammar. It seems that the author did not even bother to read his work again, let alone edit it. I had to overcome an irresistible drive to take a red pen in my hand and make the necessary corrections.

I, the reader, felt like a teacher not only because the text was crying for being improved in so many ways, but also because it sounded like school homework – and quite a clumsy story-telling in a rather telegraphic style. The titles of the chapters also strengthened this impression. Numbering them would have done less harm.

Being a story that takes place in Africa, I was expecting a well-described and colourful setting, but there was no atmosphere and no sense of place; it could have been anywhere. A pity and a missed chance...

To makes things worse, the characters are flat, with little to no development and some of them behave in quite an unrealistic way. There is no drama and the romance is as artificial as plastic flowers.

Much of the dialogue does not further the plot (but deleting it would make the book even shorter) and the point of view is inconsistent. The voice (or absence of) reminds me again of my school days. And the author is telling not showing.

Unfortunately, the story fails to convey anything to the reader unless the motivation of improving the text could be regarded as something.... The plot is tiresome and transparent and the conclusion is worthy of a fairy tale even if “they lived happily ever after” was not explicitly there.

The best of this book is its title. But, sadly, it only makes the reader expect something beautiful and rare which is not there to find and therefore it becomes a disappointment. So, I am sorry to say that I cannot recommend it. One star out of four for the effort.

***
Buy "Kiss of a Black Woman" on Amazon