Book Review: Bom Boy

One of the great things about books is that they can sit on your bookshelf, unassuming and sharing none of their magic for months on end until one day out of some sense of boredom you pick them up and they captivate you from the first sentence. At least that’s the case with me and Yewande Omotoso’s Bom Boy. This is the sort of book that you inhabit while you’re reading it and its pages feel like home. The plot is not complex in any way but the story Omotoso tells breathes with a life of its own. It’s books like these that remind you why human beings love stories.

Bom Boy is the story of Leke, a socially awkward young man who is haunted by a family curse inherited from his father. It’s the story Elaine and Oscar, Leke’s parents and how that curse affected them. It’s also the story of Jane and Marcus, Leke’s adoptive parents. At its roots this is simply (and therein also lies the complexity) the story of people dealing with their situations by whatever means they can. It’s simply life.

Bom Boy is beautifully written and will haunt you like the family curse haunts Leke. This is definitely a book I’d recommend to anyone who likes stories, which is to say everyone.

Yewande Omotoso

Omotoso was born in Barbados and raised in Nigeria. She has a Nigerian father, West Indian mother and two brothers. She is an architect; space and buildings being a passion of hers second to literature. She lives in Cape Town working as a designer, writer and novelist.