O, Africa! by Andrew Lewis Conn

Published by Hogarth on June 10, 2014

Micah and Izzy Grand are filmmakers in the silent age of Keaton and Chaplin. Their star is Harry Till, the appealing "everyman" of silent film comedy. Sadly for them, the age of silent movies is coming to an end. "Talkies" will soon be the rage, although the Grand brothers' producer assures them that talkies are just a fad.

The producer is clearly lacking business sense, which explains his studio's enormous debt. To recover his losses, the producer wants to send the Grands to Africa so they can film stock footage that the producer can lease to other studios. At the same time, two hoods to whom Micah owes a gambling debt dream up a "historical tragical" movie they call "O, Africa!" They are willing to forgive Micah's debt if he makes their movie. Izzy jumps at the chance to make a serious movie while Micah, who fears that they are incapable of making a serious film, is motivated to go to Africa by the need to avoid the potentially brutal consequences of his unpaid debt.

The Grand brothers are joined by their silent film star, a midget, the son of Micah's lover, and a couple of others as they journey to Africa. Apart from tribal leaders in Africa and the Grand brothers' entourage, other significant characters include Madam Queen Stephanie St. Clair, a Carribbean numbers runner who considers herself an investor in the film; Rose, Micah's African American lover; Rose's husband; Micah's wife; the brothers' financially troubled producer; and a variety of relatively benign criminals. All of the characters have the solidity of real people.

The movie the Grands plan to make initially involves the capture of slaves, a serious subject that Andrew Lewis Conn lightens with amusing images of the Grand bothers' interaction with villagers who don't know what to make of the odd people who enlist them as actors. When the brothers return from Africa, the question is whether their epic film will ever be made.

The promotional materials for O Africa! liken the novel to Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It is similar in that it imagines children of immigrants in the first half of the twentieth century struggling to make their mark in a creative industry. Where Chabon's prose is an exercise in effortless elegance, however, Conn sometimes tries too hard. The resulting voice is occasionally strained. Not that Conn's prose is bad -- it is often quite good, just not uniformly excellent. Still, his writing is of a higher quality than most debut novelists manage.

The story features a litany of prejudices -- religion, race, sexual identity -- as if Conn was going through a checklist. Some of that comes across as forced. The novel's second half, including another trip to Africa, is less engaging than the first, and the ending is weak. There are nevertheless some excellent scenes in O, Africa!, scenes that would play well in a movie, whether silent or a talkie. In the end, the novel strives for a meaning it never quite attains. Its key themes -- filming the world changes it, the passage of time changes the world -- are underdeveloped. None of those flaws prevented me from enjoying O, Africa! The novel left me looking forward to Conn's next effort.

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