Grey Angels, novel in English by Virginia Phiri,
Published/reprinted in 2019, by Corals Services,
Harare, Isbn: 9781779295033
Reviewed by Memory Chirere
When it finally breaks into mainstream reading
society, Virginia Phiri’s latest novel, Grey Angels will definitely set tongues
wagging, in Zimbabwe and beyond, for a number of reasons.
“I Linda Jojo, who is supposed to be Prof Joseph Jojo’s
daughter decided to do the unthinkable…” says the narrator from the very start.
And yet Virginia Phiri is using a clever technique coined “the unreliable
narrator” by Wayne C. Booth way back in 1961.
In this kind of writing the narrator's unreliability is never
fully revealed but only hinted at, leaving readers to wonder how much the
narrator should be trusted and how the story should be interpreted.
Put differently; what Linda is seeing is very
difficult for her or the less discerning reader to comprehend. It is our duty
to find out the meaning of what she says she has seen. You may need to read
between the lines and read backwards, or sideways, all the way. That is Virginia
Phiri territory.
Linda’s father is an enigma. He is a master of sorcery,
even opening what Linda calls “a bush school” in which selected children are forced
to train in both cultural issues and the dark arts. Linda’s father is a leading
Biologist in the country and has come up with ground breaking scientific researches.
He is also a devout Christian upon whom the whole church relies. You keep on
asking, is he a fake or a genius?
When Linda is born, he disappears with her to some
unknown place during the full moon. When he returns, the baby is covered up in ritual
blood. His mouth is dripping blood. He
tells his cowed wife not to bath the baby for a specific period. And yet he does
not tell his wife whether the blood is from animal or man.
On Saturdays, he takes the teenage Linda to the bush school
for initiations which include; incisions, lacerations and having dragon tattoos
drawn across her thighs. On Sundays he happily takes Linda and the family to the
Christian church in his Pontiac. At some point, he tries to arrange a marriage
for Linda but she wriggles out. He has a mentor, a shadowy university colleague
called Dr Swaga Swaga. Together, they are indomitable until one is caught in
bed with the other’s wife.
Linda offers passive resistance in order to save her
mother and siblings from the marauding professor. Linda’s mother, Tandeka Jojo,
is a hapless school dropout who was forced to marry a man double her age. She doesn’t
know the real day to day activities of her very-very learned husband. She does
not understand why her husband keeps bodies of various dead rodents and insects
in the house. She does not understand the countless rituals that her husband
performs everywhere in the house.
When the professor is inflicted by insanity and dies,
the family is relieved as it is safer to mourn him than to live with him. The
manuscript of his memoir is in the house, ready for publishing. Maybe only from
that book will the truth emerge. His major weakness is not to reveal his agenda
to the people around him. His angels can only be grey and not bright.
Virginia Phiri is no stranger to the genre of taboo
writing. In Desperate, her collection of short stories of 2002, she writes
about women in various kinds of prostitution. In Destiny, her novel of 2006, she
writes about a character who is a hermaphrodite. In Highway Queen a work of
2010, she writes about the cross boarder trading women of Zimbabwe and the
horrors that they confront and triumph over.
Virginia Phiri has featured in various poetry and short
story anthologies in English, Shona and Ndebele. She has also contributed in
non-fiction anthologies such as Women in Resilience (2000). Phiri is also an
African Orchids expert and has published many articles in international orchid
journals. In 1999, a new species of orchid was named after her. The orchid is
called “Polystachya Phirii”.
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