If ever a book set out to mirror the vibrant, brimming city for which it was almost titled, Lagoon has certainly done it. Everything about it is diverse and varied: In structure it feels part oral tradition, part theater, part screenplay, part memoir in content it bubbles over with characters from different species, ethnicities, classes, genders, sexualities, religions. Lagoon absolutely teems with characters, perspectives, and Englishes. I felt this book must have been written at least partially in response to Neill Blomkamp's film District 9, an anti-racist fable that drew criticism for its stereotypically negative portrayal of Nigerians in Lagoon, instead, we have a First Contact story that provides the context for a wide-ranging survey of the people, lives and beliefs that make up the city of Lagos.
From that moment on the narrative is dazzlingly refracted through the eyes of bishops, children, presidents, spiders, swordfish, and many, many more, as Lagos erupts in response to contact with aliens who call themselves change. Swordfish grow golden and spiky, flying fish have razor-fins, cephalopods become huger and smarter.Īnd Anthony, Agu, and Adaora emerge shaken, changed, and accompanied by an alien ambassador in human form calling herself Ayodele as they try to make enough sense of what's happened to tell the rest of Lagos and the world. What happens next is no joke: A gigantic fist-shaped wave rises out of the ocean and swallows them up, dragging them down to meet the aliens who've parked their ship in the depths, purifying the polluted waters and granting the local marine life's every desire to be bigger, stronger, faster than they've been before.
Bar Beach attracted drug dealers, squatters, various accents and languages, seagulls, garbage, biting flies, tourists, all kinds of religious zealots, hawkers, prostitutes, johns, water-loving children and their careless parents. The ocean mixed with the land and the wealthy mixed with the poor. In many ways, Bar Beach was a perfect sample of Nigerian society.
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