Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti

Reviewed by August Cosentino

Tobias Wolff once said a great book of short stories should be like a novel where none of the main characters know each other.

In the case of Nana Nkweti’s “Walking on Cowrie Shells,” I’d go further than that. None of the writing styles in each of these stories sounds exactly like the other. The only qualities they share are 1) they are uniformly excellent and 2) they reflect the talent and imagination of a young Cameroonian woman so good, she slayed at the Iowa Writers Workshop some years back.  

Nkweti’s talent and wit come through loud and clear in this new anthology. My favorite story is “Night Becomes Us,” in which a ladies room attendant in 212 has to put up with all the whacked-out clubbers who frequent a hot Manhattan nightspot.

I also liked “Kills You Inside,” where a hired hack from a French company is asked to investigate reported incidents of Africans who survive guerrilla attacks and turn into zombies. (Just go with it, people. It’s genuinely great.)

Similarly, “Living Intimate” is a love story between a sexy young Cameroonian immigrant and a lobster fisherman in Louisiana. Wait for the amazing plot twist. 

Besides being a novelist, Nkweti is also a poet. And I felt that sometimes her sentences are so chocked full of beautiful words, they get in the way of the plot.

But persist, I say. Think of such a sentence

as a luscious piece of fruitcake you need to savor slowly, one bite at a time. The pleasure lasts longer that way.