Café Babanussa

by Karen Hill

A moving portrait of a young woman’s experience of life, love and the shifting tides of mental health in 1980s–era Berlin

In this beautifully written and moving novel, informed by many of the author’s own experiences, a young mixed-race woman travels from Canada to Germany to start her life anew. Ruby Edwards, escaping a loving but at times overbearing family, throws herself into the shifting social and political sinews of 1980s-era West Berlin—a time of new music, punk rockers, travellers, racial tensions and a beating pulse of artistic energy. Here, Ruby finds love and new challenges, striving to discover the person she was meant to be. But the highs become too high and the lows too low, and Ruby finds herself plunged into the depths of mental illness. With courage and determination, Ruby again and again pulls herself back from the brink and revels in what matters most to her—her family, her community and her own individuality. Inspiring and heart-rending, Café Babanussa is an engrossing, deftly crafted novel by a voice that was lost to us all too soon.

Also includes Karen Hill’s original essay, “On Being Crazy”.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

368 pages, Paperback

First published February 2, 2016

About the author

Karen Hill was born in Newmarket, Ontario, in 1958, and grew up in Toronto. After graduating from the University of Ottawa, she moved to West Berlin in 1979, where she stayed for nearly a decade. She became an avid traveller and spoke English, French, Spanish and German. Later, she returned to Toronto, where she raised her daughter Malaika Hill and administered an English as a second language program for the Toronto School Board and worked for the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

Like her parents, Daniel and Donna Hill, and siblings, Lawrence (author) and Dan (singer-songwriter and author), she wrote creatively and felt passionately about issues of gender, race and culture. She also struggled throughout her life with bipolar disorder.

Karen worked for more than twenty years on Cafe Babanussa, which she had finished and was showing to publishers when she died in 2014.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I chose this book because of its cover; solely because of its cover. I found it confusing, loud and garish. So I chose it. Of course. Nico and I are (mostly) enjoying participating in a biannual bookathon. One challenge was to read a book with an unappealing cover. This one won. Hands down. No contest. Unfortunately, I also had to read it. I had a really hard time getting through it. I wanted to like it. I was interested in the author's family and the premise of the book : travelling in a relative's footsteps, finding oneself, fighting mental illness. Well, we heard about 3 lines of her relative's experience once she reached Europe. She found herself by returning home. Perhaps a bit simplistic, and possibly unfair, but I don't care at this point. The section about mental illness was fine. Not sterling. Nothing really new. Anyway, the laundry needs attention and it's more interesting than this book. So I'll go attend to it.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find this book hard to review because so much surrounding it is beautiful and heartbreaking. The foreword by Lawrence Hill is a poignant remembrance of his sister, and Karen Hill's essay "On Being Crazy" included after the novel is very real. Unfortunately, the writing in the novel didn't quite do it for me. The conversations felt stilted and false. The story was a fictionalization of Karen's own life which I felt was much better written about in her essay. I wasn't too moved by it; but her real story, the one about a beloved sister and daughter and mother who was full of life and struggled with mental illness and died too soon, was incredibly touching.

[Shan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knowing that this is based on Hill's life experiences makes it a moving novel, especially considering that she passed away a year before it was published and never got to see the finished product. It is a beautiful story about race and mental health, set against the backdrop of Berlin in the 1980's. Unfortunately I found the dialogue to be very basic and lacking emotion and because of this I found it hard to connect. I felt that the story did get stronger in the second half as the mental illness took over Ruby's life and you could tell that it was written directly from Hill's own experience. But I found that the essay written by Hill that was included at the end of the novel was a stronger emotional experience than the book.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a challenge it is, describing this novel. The prose is clumsy and overly-descriptive, with a few gem sentences here and there. Characters often read as overly abrupt or unpredictable, which is only in part intentional, I would guess. I love Ruby's spunk, and although she is not a character that I fell deeply in love with, I do feel how close Ruby was to her creator, Karen Hill. The scenes in the hospital, the scenes of jumbled disorientation as Ruby's mind began to slip, read more truly to me than the moments of intended normality in the novel. Karen Hill's article at the end was a good example of why this may have made an even more compelling memoir than novel, but I still do feel privileged to have had the opportunity to read it. I hope she is at rest now.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writen by Karen, sister of the famous Hill brothers Laurence and Dan. Very poignant journey of a Brown woman in Berlin with mental illness in the 80's and beyond. I wonder if a half-way house would be an improvement rather than locking people up in the wards...

[Hailey Hyun · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I told my eighteen year old daughter that I was sure they were going to kill me. She insisted that I call her hourly."

This is a very strange book to classify. It ends with an essay by the author "On Being Crazy" and that was the best thing about it. I feel like I could have just read that essay and maybe select parts of the book.

The book follows a biracial woman from Canada to Europe and then deals with her struggles with mental health. It is obviously based on Karen Hill's real life. The European part feels like I'm reading someone's blog about traveling to Europe. She describes the settings in a way that I think captures what the places were like when she went there. There are also some cultural conflicts that I recognize. The rest of the writing is mostly just kind of okay. It gets a lot better when we get into the mental health issues, if I can say that. I mean, it is not so good for her, but I found those parts fascinating. The writing in those chapters is better. I think she might have become an excellent writer. Sadly, she did not live to see her book published.

A major publishing company picked up this book. Karen Hill was not a bad writer, don't get me wrong, but she was also the daughter of a Canadian politician. Her brothers were Dan Hill, the Canadian folksinger and Lawrence Hill, a very good Canadian writer. I found out about this book because I was reading Lawrence Hill. I think these things had something to do with such a major publisher picking up this book and I feel like I'm a terrible person for saying that.

But if you read the parts about her bipolar condition and her essay on "Being Crazy" you will learn a lot about mental health issues and feel a little of what it must be like to live with them, so I think this is an important book for those reasons. Unfortunately, too much of "Cafe Babanussa" isn't really about those things.

[Magdelanye · Rating 4 out of 5]

everyone was talking at her and it was all negative. She didn't know how to defend herself or if she even had to. All her life she had felt like she had done something horribly wrong though she didn't know what. p157

I don't believe it's my job anymore to convert all the fascists and racists running around...in the end it is a waste of time. p243. say something and get the hell out. p244

Bold, provocative, zesty and vulnerable, Cafe Babanussa welcomes you. Karen Hill has fictionalized her rebellious life as an expat in Berlin, her delightful promiscuity and her devastating diagnosis.

Decrepit yet exquisite, anarchistic and fascist, the city had intoxicated her. p229

With a German boyfriend and a quick grasp of the language, she made friends easily and seemed to be able to handle her complicated relationship issues and occasional homesickness. Yet she had inherited a stealthy disease that sideswiped her carefully curated life. Periods of institutionalization alternated with periods of relative calm for the rest of her life.

There is something ominous about having other people control your pain. p156
The more you go on about how dangerous life is, the more I want to go out and play hard and fast. p249

I was very glad to note that through all of her trials and tribulations, her illustrious family did not reject her and indeed flew to Berlin to care for her on several occasions. Her brother Laurence has given an insightful introduction. And there is an appendix with the original essay 'On Being Crazy'

So many rules. I can't remember them. Who made them up? How do I know they're on my side? p327

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a poignant book bookended by Lawrence Hill's introduction to his late sister's novel and Karen's own powerful essay on "Being Crazy". I appreciate Hill's tenacity in accomplishing her dream of writing this novel and her courage in facing a life that wasn't often easy for her. The issues of race seem all too current as does the terrible toll that mental illness can exact on people. I'm glad to have finally read this book which I have rated as a piece of literature and not as a value to the life experiences and love that mark every aspect of it. If that were my rating guide I would have offered 5 stars.

[Alysha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Bitter sweet, really gives an insight on how people with mental health think & what they go through. Karen Hill left behind a beautiful story, may she rest in paradise and I hope she found peace.

[Chanda Prescod-weinstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had Karen been able to work with an editor this would have been a five star book. The dialogue is weak and as another reviewer said, it lacks emotion. But the themes she grapples with are powerful and she has a unique, important angle on the issues of identity that come up. I will be thinking about this book for a long time.

[Lisa Day · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read set at an interesting time.

[Elayne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very stagnant story, somehow feel like nothing happened or progressed at all

[Pamela · Rating 2 out of 5]

The ENDING happens after Ruby confronts her childhood abuser. It is a good ending, and although I understand the desire to leave this novel as it stood, because it provides such an insight into mental illness, I wish they had edited it so that it would have been tighter (if they had cut the adverbs for instance).
"Walking down the driveway, Ruby felt relieved and agitated at the same time. It took her a few moments to regain her composure. When she did, she continued down to the street and walked towards the streetcar stop. She found a seat at the back. She watched the vistas passing by her as she gazed out the window, heart still throbbing. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she sat thinking, turning the card Susanna had given her over and over in her shaky hand. So it was true. She felt ill and her mouth was still dry as a bone. There was nothing left to do but grieve and get help. She wondered if she would be free of the delusions and dreams that had stalked her so. She hadn't told her parents about Melvin Burns and tried to imagine their surprise, their hurt for her. She would have to tell them soon now. She sat shaken and dishevelled, leaning against the window.
An hour later, Ruby walked up the driveway to her parents' home. The front door was open and the September sun was streaming into the hallway. Her mother stepped out of the kitchen with Nyota in her arms and came to greet her at the door. Ruby scooped her daughter out of her mother's embrace. She squeezed her tight and sat down in the living room. She lifted her top and prepared to let her baby suckle at her swollen breasts. She rippled her fingers through Nyota's hair and gently rubbed her skull, then she tweaked her little nose. She thought of all the stories she would tell her when she was older. She smiled. She was home. She was safe."

Makes me sad for missed opportunities, for not knowing in the moment how extraordinary things were when I was young... Or did I?
"They didn't stay for much longer and went to sit on the patio of one of the neighbourhood's many cafés. It was getting warmer now, and a light breeze rustled through the nearby trees. Ruby looked at Abena and felt sad to be losing another friend."

Although much of this novel is overly dramatic, I like this too.
"... Once outside she held her head up to face the sun and yelled, 'Shine on me. I worship you.'"

Much of the writing is raw and not well edited, but the ending of the paragraph is beautiful.
"She left the men and wandered out into the dusk, staring at the stars blinking in the early night sky. The pungent smell of eucalyptus filled her nostrils. It all smelled so new, so clean. She pressed a hand into her belly and thought, 'Daughter of the southern stars.'"

Thus it BEGINS.
"THE TABLE WAS SET FOR FOUR. RUBY HAD CHOSEN plates from her university days, a motley but bright assortment of red, yellow and blue. She cut fresh lilacs from her mother's garden and placed them in a tapered glass vase in the centre of the large oak table. The house smelled of rosemary and thyme, which had been sprinkled over the pissaladière.
'What's in the oven? Pizza à la derrière?' her father joked as he joined her in the kitchen. James Edwards was a no-nonsense type most of the time, but indulged in much rib-poking with his two daughters. He had a deep, honey-sweetened voice and frequently burst into song, riffing and scatting away à la Ella: 'Doo bop re bop wop doo bop, oh yeah.' Ruby would often sing back an answer, as she did now. 'Scooby dooby bop bop, till you drop, drop, whoo, hoo, yeah.'"

[Ellen S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a moving and well-written novel, by Karen Hill, the late sister of writer Lawrence Hill and singer Dan Hill, based on her own life but with the story transformed into fiction. The book is set in the early 1980's. Ruby, the daughter of a Black father and white mother, has grown up in a politically-aware, comfortable family in Toronto ... marred only by her mother's occasional bouts of mental illness. She goes to West Berlin to explore a wider world (she chooses Berlin because a great-uncle had lived there in the 1920's), and though she loves the city, makes friends, and learns more about herself, she also finds herself slipping into mental illness. Her struggles to deal with this, to recover, find love, and still be herself are vividly depicted, as is Berlin in the years before the Wall came down -- its vitality and its not-so-latent racism. Ruby, like Karen herself, is an excellent cook, one way she embraces life. The scenes with other women in the Berlin mental hospital are unusual in their honesty and perception. Ruby's changing, sometimes difficult but always loving relationship with her parents and sister is another major theme of the book. Finally, Ruby deals with an actual demon from her past with courage and honesty.
Karen also lived in Berlin, then returned to Toronto, where she worked, raised her daughter, and struggled with episodes of mental illness for three decades while writing and rewriting this book. It becomes an excellent novel, not a memoir or "issue book." Unfortunately, Karen died in 2014, choking on some food. The novel has fine, appreciative introduction by Lawrence Hill and a short essay at the end, "On Being Crazy," by Karen herself, giving us a glimpse into her own life. This is a book worth reading -- I am glad to have met Ruby and shared her experiences.

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was published post-humously. The author is Karen Hill, Lawrence Hill's sister. Karen suffered from bipolar disorder, and this novel is semi-autobiographical. Like the main character in the story, Karen lived overseas in Berlin for many years. The novel follows the life of Ruby Edwards, a young biracial woman living in Berlin, as she has romantic affairs, encounters racism and has episodes of depression and mania. This was an interesting and intriguing book.

Lawrence Hill writes the foreword to his sister's novel, and her heartbreaking essay, "On being crazy", is included in the back.

[Shilpa · Rating 3 out of 5]



I couldn't begin to understand the turmoil that grapples the mind of someone with mental illness, but Karen Hill has given me a glimpse into that space of uncertainty. What must it feel like to suddenly lose control of your mind and surroundings. I will continue to wonder if there is that tipping point, some hope that once pin-pointed can help solve the roller coaster of emotional unrest and turmoil that unsettles a family for the rest of their lives.

Full Review: http://sukasareads.blogspot.ca/2016/0...

[Sara G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe a 3.6, but not a full 4 stars. While I liked the book, I also wanted more from it. It is set in 1980s Berlin and yet, it didn't capture the atmosphere of the time. I felt it could have taken place anywhere and any time. The setting was important to the author (and autobiographical) so it would have been good to see place as a larger character of the novel.

[Lynnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend this read!

[AUDR£¥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book !!! Will be looking out for more of her books! Thank you Karen Hill.