Slim
 Ruth Linnea Whitney
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 2003 Southern Methodist U. Press
 ISBN: 087074478X

Ruth Linnea Whitney is featured in our
Authors & Books

Set in a small, interior African nation at the start of the AIDS epidemic.

Ruth Linnea Whitney's debut novel centers on eight people -- a divorced young American orthopaedist, a 50 year-old Scottish gynecologist, an idealist young African journalist, a short-sighted president of a landlocked country, an ancient healer; a feckless & greedy father; a young mother far from her native village, & Alinofe, a boy whose prophetic images haunt them all as the scourge awakens among them.

Everyone is so ordinary & flawed & ...magnificent in the way they look at the world in a place where life is very, very hard; dream about their lives, see what others are doing, & learn how to accommodate each others' troubles.

The clash of cultures is clear & uncompromisingly exposed -- the harsh & impudently direct Americans flounder around the subtler & more complex Africans, both young & old. The many layers to the way Africans view the world entwines with the way the “rescuing” Western doctors filter life -- so familiar & unimaginative...& everyone is overwhelmed by the weather & the burgeoning disease.

What a rich & textured read! Part history, part reporting of the culture clashes & political wiles. Always lyrical...open up Slim (the name given to this new wasting disease which becomes a looming presence in & of itself) & be enticed into...another people...another way of life...another geography. Elegantly & flawlessly written, with a profound story to tell -- the beginning of AIDS in a community. Tragic, infuriating & fascinating.

Ruth Linnea Whitney knows of what she has written: having lived in sub-Saharan Africa, & volunteered in far corners of the developing world with her orthopaedist husband. She recently taught English as a Second Language at Peninsula College in Port Townsend, Washington.

Ruth Linnea Whitney is featured in our Authors & Books
(08/31/03)

Rebecca