The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood

#310
Title: The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood
Author: Helene Cooper
Year: 2008
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Country: Liberia
365 pages

Cooper's memoir of growing up in, fleeing from, and returning to make her peace with Liberia. Some reviewers have been unhappy that Cooper did not focus more on Liberia's internal conflict, but this is a memoir, not a journalistic appraisal of a country's political and social problems. It's appropriate to her chosen genre that Cooper focuses on her recollections of childhood, preoccupations and relationships, and life experiences, set inextricably in the context of her country's growing strife. There seemed to be plenty of history and commentary on Liberia, with the familial emphasis you would expect in a memoir.

Other reviewers have criticized her as lacking emotional expression, which is not what I see. Many memoirs of traumatic events are narrated with a superficial distance but are nonetheless very emotionally evocative, and that is the case for this life story as well.

My complaints about the book have nothing to do with the content. There are a few egregiously bad typos ("who's" for "whose" is an example), but this is the editor's oversight, not Cooper's. The typeface in the hardback is a thick, serifed style that is hard on the eye. As a narrative, however, I found it interesting and engaging.