I'd seen so much buzz about Asha Lemmie's debut novel, Fifthy Words for Rain and was really hoping for something great. I was disappointed. This is the story of Nori, the mixed-race bastard granddaughter of a cousin of the Emperor of Japan after World War II. Nori has never met her Afro-American father and gets dumped on her grandparents by her beautiful, restless mother when she's about 8 years old. Nori is an embarrassment to her grandparents so is kept hidden up in an attic. Her maid needs to sneak her downstairs to use the bathroom. And the baths she is given? They're filled with some chemical in the hopes that it will lighten Nori's complexion.
Things change when Nori's half-brother, the hope of the family, comes to live with their grandmother. It opens up Nori's world.
I kept expecting something to happen that would really shake things up. But in my opinion, the story just kind of plod along. In the end, I was left with more questions than answers in a very dissatisfying way. Lemmie's use of language is beautiful so this wasn't a difficult book to read. But while there might not be another novel that tackles this story, there are many much better books to read. I wouldn't recommend this one.
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