Boubacar, like most private eyes, is down on his luck. Work has dried up, and he doesn’t really know what to do with himself. That is until a bleeding woman shows up on his doorstep, disappearing just as fast as she burst into his life. The authorities were out to get her, and an itch needed scratching. Despite the lack of anyone paying him to track her down, Boubacar sets out to punch the hornet’s nest himself. But when he’s beaten to shit after being told he’s asking too many questions, and witnesses a section of the city rise from the ground, he can’t help but keep digging, physical, mental and spiritual well being be damned.
home with Onyebuchi’s prose in Harmattan Season. There is a depth to his writing that deceives the reader. I would never call his prose simplistic, but it’s a style of writing that slides down like a pill in water, delivering its effects in a delayed manner. There are always sentences that stand out, especially in a neo-noir detective story, but the majority of his prose builds on itself. Despite the more straightforward engagement with the reader, through the first-person narrative employed by Boubacar, this style still works. It builds a certain trust with the reader, letting them in on the joke that the characters have to work through as they live the punchline. Speaking of which, there is a dark humor to the story. Boubacar’s musings on his own life and situation are both sincerely heartfelt and deliciously funny. There is a joke early on that uses the structure of the book to its advantage, and it makes me happy it exists.
The story itself is an interesting journey into the heart of West Africa, dealing with its recent, and arguably ongoing, colonial past. The mystery at the center of the story leads Boubacar down increasingly dangerous paths as he uses his identity as a deux fois (a French father and Nigerian mother) to deal with all sorts of folk, including revolutionary leaders and secret police. Boubacar himself recognizes this as both a power and a curse. More often than not, it’s the latter, but that also seems to be latched onto his status as a guy who asks too many good questions. As his relationship with the case deepens, his nature starts to solidify as he examines his own past. The roads he follows and the ways he pries open the doors in his path are equally exciting and harrowing. A critical aspect of the story is Boubacar’s physical health, as he consistently finds himself at the wrong end of many kicks and punches. He becomes slowed down, days pass while he’s unconscious, and the world keeps turning. It isn’t something that is necessarily remarked on within the book, but it feels so thoroughly enmeshed that it heightens the stakes as he gets closer to solving the case.
I have some experience with detective-style stories, both in novel and film form, and Harmattan Season doesn’t disappoint in that regard. It has the heavy-handed feeling of someone trying to impress the reader with their own read on the situation, but laced with the dramatic irony that our narrator is unreliable. Boubacar’s voice still resonates, though. There is always a sort of stalwart and sardonic pessimism to narrations of this nature, which Boubacar replicates, but there is a prevailing sense that he’s including himself within his acerbic asides. Often things happen to the detective narrator, and by god, he’s gotta figure out how to fight his way out of his misfortune. But there is an edge to Boubacar that makes it feel like he is the sealer of his own fate in this regard. He can’t help but overturn stones, even if no one is paying him for it. It doesn’t hurt that he constantly mentions a sordid past that makes his position within the city dubious enough that the only work he really can do is be a private detective. There is the added bonus that there is a setup and payoff to Boubacar as a character and the wider story of the case he gets involved in.
One last bit about the book I want to point out before diving into some of the grittier bits is that Onyebuchi defines a very strong sense of place within Harmattan Season. I don’t mean in the usual sense of geography and time, because I honestly could not tell you the time period or the exact place Boubacar exists within. But there is a prevailing sense of atmosphere that makes this time and place feel so spectacular. Harmattan season is a specific season in West Africa that is dry and dusty with massive temperature swings. It fills the air of the story with a vague miasmic electricity that something is at a breaking point, but everyone is wandering through the wilderness. The city itself, and various locations within, feel connected, but the tissue that binds is diaphanous and otherworldly, making it feel dream-like. Paired with Boubacar’s frequent loss of consciousness, it makes the whole thing feel like a waking nightmare. It lends the story that “je ne sais quois” of noir films from the 30s and 40s.
I think that something the book struggles with in its themes is Boubacar’s own sense of place. Being born of two worlds, he can make himself approachable to various groups of folk. His job as a detective forces him to carry a lot of information, which many people want from him and try to leverage against him. His past, hinted at through the story as some special branch of the French colonial military, holds a lot of his baggage. The things he’s perpetrated on the indigenous dugulen haunt him and provide a sense of camaraderie with the chief of police. It weighs him down and builds a wall within him towards the dugulen, despite that being another half of who he is. I often find stories that employ this narrative tough to read because it’s often used as a superficial point of conflict. But Boubacar’s exploration of his sense of self through this lens feels both personal and collective. What does it mean to belong to both of these groups, and how does one side align with either part when certain truths start to become known?
Onyebuchi has always explored race and culture within his work, but each work engages them in different ways. Harmattan Season feels different because the conception of race within the story doesn’t feel American. I don’t know if I could necessarily call it “French Racism” either (note I am not a scholar of racism), but it doesn’t carry the same kind of noticeable weight that race would in America. Class is also heavily at play, and who you work for in terms of national agendas affects your standing amongst the various factions. I think it’s best highlighted by the fact that the story seems to take place during the newborn to toddler stages of a state. There are French soldiers and French governmental interests shaking hands with the head of state who controls a police force, and then there is everyone else and the various groups they belong to. It can get a little messy keeping track of who is on what side for which reason, but I think Onyebuchi pulls it off in the small page count. The lack of solidity and ossification is the point. It’s not that anything can come of the situation, but anything “could” come of it. It’s a fine tight rope to walk, and personally, I’m convinced. It gives the climax and conclusions a satisfying feel that still maintains its noir bona fides.
Harmattan Season, by Tochi Onyebuchi, is short and bittersweet. The story maximizes its themes through deep character work provided by the narrator himself. The mystery, along with the fantastical aspects of the world, deepens the narrative, and the conclusion feels earned. If you’re in the mood for a noir that still hits the dopamine button but still leaves you wounded, you can’t go wrong with reading this book.
Rating: Harmattan Season – When this shadow darkens your door, open it and listen to its woe.
-Alex
