Coming down from Wa: Audrey Thomas

by Audrey Thomas

William Kwane MacKenzie's life has always been full of puzzels. His grandfather is able to answer some of his questions, and directs him to the place where he knows the rest of the answers can be found: Africa.

Ghana, and the time William's parents spent there as aid workers in the sixties, hold the key to the family's secret past. And so William embarks on a voyage that will take him around the globe and into the past on a heart-wrenching quest for the truth -- truth, and a knowledge of himself that can only be found in this mysterious, challenging, and beautiful land.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Africa

290 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Audrey Grace Thomas, née Callahan, novelist and short story writer (b at Binghamton, NY 17 Nov 1935). Audrey Thomas was educated at Smith College, Mass, and St Andrews University, Scotland, and then taught in England for a year. In 1959 she moved to Canada and in 1963 earned an MA at the University of British Columbia. From 1964 to 1966 she lived in Ghana, but eventually settled on Galiano Island. She has published more than 15 novels and short story collections, more than 20 radio plays, several broadcast on CBC Radio, and numerous travel articles, some of which featured in Air Canada's in-flight magazine.

Thomas' writing has been described as feminine; her forte is the minutiae of women's lives, and she has claimed to strive "to demonstrate the terrible gap between men and women" and "to give women a sense of their bodies." Her style is characterized by word play; she emphasizes puns, etymologies, euphemisms, words within words, and pointing to the inherent possibilities, ironies and ambiguities of language. This close attention to language highlights the act of writing itself, and the possibilities and impossibilities of communication in human relationships. Her writing is also rich with literary allusion, from Shakespeare to Conrad, and from the Bible to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Audrey Thomas is a multi-award winning author. She has been recognized provincially, winning the Ethel Wilson Prize three times (for Intertidal Life, 1985, Wild Blue Yonder, 1991 and Coming Down from Wa, 1996). She has twice been nominated for the Governor General's Award (1984 and 1985), and has been internationally recognized with the Canada-Scotland Writer's Literary fellowship (1984-6) and the Canada-Australia Literary Prize (1989). In 1987 she won the Marian Engel Award, awarded annually to a female Canadian author for her contribution to Canadian literature. In 2003 Audrey Thomas won the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award.

(from http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.co...)

Reviews

[Maria Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could be mistaken but I think I may be only the 2nd person to review Coming Down From Wa here. The other reviewer also gave 4 stars, and says that having lived in Ghana he finds the book authentic. I've never been to Africa at all. Nor had I read much by Audrey Thomas except for a short story or an excerpt from a novel, published in a literary review. I do recall that that short story or excerpt bristled with the kind of danger that a foreigner can get themselves into in a distant and impoverished place. I do recall being impressed and wanting to read more by Audrey Thomas. OK so now I have (read more by Audrey Thomas: I've just finished Coming Down From Wa.
Audrey Thomas is a highly intelligent writer, and CDFW reads almost like a script in that every detail of our protagonist's time in the spotlight of this book is detailed so that you can see Thomas seeing William Kwame MacKenzie doing all the things that he does. However at times he seems to be more of a mouthpiece or eyepiece stand in for Thomas, and when he muses feminist thoughts, well, it's not hard to see where our fictitious character got those ideas. There are lovely bits, like the part about William having a painter's eye but not a painter's hand. And kudos to Audrey Thomas for doing something I have never seen (read) done in a novel before, (though I am sure it must have been done somewhere else) which is repeating, word for word, an entire section of the novel, a section from the beginning that sets up dramatic tension but that we also need to have repeated for us so that we can revisit it and refresh our memories. How many writers do their readers such a service? No need to hunt back for previous passages as if writing an essay, chore like, on the book in question. Movies often do the flash back thing but this worked incredibly well and for that alone I would give the book the four stars that i gave to it. As for any complaints or negative comments I may have, perhaps the story dragged a bit at times. Really, if there had not been a juicy secret at the center of the story (and towards the end of the book) I don't know that I would have finished this novel. I do appreciate its sophistication and Coming Down From Wa is not an easy read, it's not a chick lit, it's an interesting feminist slanted story told from the (3rd person) point of view of a man and set in Ghana during a not-too distant era of a few decades ago.

[Mallee Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although William's parents love him, there is something odd about their relationship. When William questions his grandfather, he learns that everything was fine between his parents until his mother returned to Ghana with him when he was two months old.
What happened in Ghana that caused this unspoken of rift between his parents? William decides to travel to Wa in the north western corner of the country to try to learn their secret.

[Steven Langdon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have spent many years working in Ghana, much of that time in the places where this book is set (including Kumasi, Tamale, Techiman, Bolgatanga and Elmina on the coast.) Much of my work, too, was with year-long overseas periods that young people from Canada were experiencing -- much like the secondments that are at the heart of this book's plot.

So it's possible for me to assess how artfully and accurately Audrey Thomas has portrayed Ghana and the experiences of young Canadians in the country. My judgement is overwhelmingly positive. Kumasi lives, with all its bustle and its variety and wealth. The harsher conditions in much of northern Ghana are conveyed well. And the sense of somewhat rootless freedom, cultural confusion and health hazards of young expatriate life is captured quite well. I enjoyed immensely re-absorbing the texture and richness of African life and personality that mark Ghana. Young William's reactions to the country, too, in all their glorious ambiguity, make for a fascinating story line -- as do the various characters that he meets (Johnny -- the sort of expatriate fundi who really does exist, Mrs. O-B -- who is also wholly believable, Alice -- who speaks so well of Ghana's future.)

This, then, is a richly textured and finely written book. My only hesitation is about the outcome of the final plot-line involving William's parents and what happened to them. I won't reveal the conclusion, but it did strike me as a tired cliche that seemed to me highly unlikely in the circumstances described. Surely Audrey Thomas, who has written some stimulating novels, could have devised a more imaginative quandary.

One more concern. This is a very good book. But it does smack a little of a tourist guide to Ghana. This may be fair enough, since William does describe himself as the only tourist in the country. But this flavour might have been overcome by having at least one strong African character emerge in the course of the novel. This might have rooted the book better and deepened its insights.