Shut Up You’re Pretty

by Téa Mutonji

On the cover, this book describes itself as stories, but I would call it a novel with an inspiring structure. Each chapter is a self-contained tale, but they follow the same central character, Loli, from her early teens to adulthood. This story structure creates a feeling of space as we hop from one scenario to the next, making me question the number of words spent joining the dots of most narratives. Given the tough subject matter, Mutonji’s writing is wonderfully well observed, matter of fact, and beautifully light: “There was just something so funny about childhood—how it attempts to prepare you for the slaughter. How it fails—how it is decorated like a nursery.” Coping with poverty, lack of parenting and no self esteem, we see Loli repeatedly fall back on the only thing she has—herself—until she finally, slowly, manages to understand her own value.