There are a small cadre of authors who redefine literary genres, writing freely without barriers. First-time novelist Oduor joins this exclusive literary club. Lonely Ayosa is a wandering spirit who becomes enthralled with the self-possessed, wandering photographer Nambumbo Promise. After following Nambumbo for many years, Ayosa takes on the body of Nambumbo's daughter, but even this familial relationship fails to keep Nambumbo anchored to one place. The other spirits and creatures that inhabit Ayosa's world are just as lonesome as she is until, in search of her mother, Ayosa makes an unlikely friend. The innocent tone of Ayosa's narration steers the reader into a time where there are no distinctions between the spiritual and the physical realms, instead there is the chance to see magic everywhere. To express this, Odour uses elements of magical realism to create a riveting story about love, friendship, and belonging, transporting the reader to a whimsical yet heartbreaking world. This tale of mystery and longing is reminiscent of works by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and perfect for fans of Akwaeke Emezi.

DEBUT In this enchanting debut novel, Kenyan-born writer Oduor spins the magical tale of lonely young Ayosa, living in the house where generations of the complicated women in her family have lived, guarded by spirits. Ayosa's mother, photojournalist Nabumbo Promise Brown, leaves her daughter for months at a time, just as her own mother, Lola Freedom, a bush pilot and physician, had abandoned her. An object of pity in the village, Ayosa fills her days reading, writing, and learning about native plants from the local apothecary. With only her transistor radio for company, she vacillates between love and hate for her neglectful mother yet listens anxiously for the sound of her car. Then one day, while in a fugue state where she sees into the past, Ayosa loses herself to the pull of the river, until another motherless girl, Mbui, saves her from the water and from herself. Through Mbui's loving eyes, Ayosa's heart opens to a future of possibilities. VERDICT Caine Prize winner Oduor explores generational abuse and violence with a gentle touch, managing to elicit compassion rather than judgment for these withholding mothers and daughters. From the novel's dazzling first sentence to its gratifying conclusion, readers will be mesmerized by Oduor's linguistic skills. Highly recommended.--Sally Bissell

A haunting bond between mother and daughter is examined in Oduor's ambitious debut. In Mapeli Town, somewhere in East Africa, Ayosa Brown grows up with the ability to see the memories of her mother, Nabumbo Promise, from before she was born. She also witnessed Nabumbo Promise being attacked by a man with a knife, followed by her mother's act of retaliation. Now, at 13, Ayosa is often left alone for weeks or months by Nabumbo Promise as she travels for work as a photographer. Nabumbo Promise is tortured by painful secrets from her childhood involving her dead brother and estranged twin sister, which Ayosa knows about but keeps to herself. Ayosa and her mother have an intense, intoxicating relationship; Ayosa's love is ever replenishing and full of forgiveness, even though her mother's kisses sometimes repulse her, "like roaches crawling across face," and her mother's love is "lukewarm at best." On her own, Ayosa bonds with Sindano, a woman who owns a café that no one visits, and with Mbiu, a girl who stands outside various windows, sometimes for hours at a time. In their company, Ayosa comes to understand unconditional love. Oduor makes loss and familial disappointment palpable through her potent and visceral prose. This keeps the reader holding their breath. Jackie Ko, Wylie Agency. (Apr.)

A young African girl with seerlike awareness of the past comes of age. Before Ayosa Ataraxis Brown was born, no more than "a wriggling thing, unbound, light as a Sunday morning thought," she was granted access to the traumatic, layered memories of her mother's past. Fittingly, a kind of strife has always marked Ayosa's relationship with her mother, Nabumbo Promise, a mercurial photographer who shares her daughter's willful spirit and is disturbed by the girl's preternatural knowledge. Now almost 13, Ayosa lives alone in the small village of Mapeli Town in a manor that belonged to her great-grandmother--an Englishwoman named Mabel Brown whose wealth spurred the town's founding--while Nabumbo Promise disappears on work assignments for months on end. As Ayosa awaits her mother's return with a mix of love and anger, ever wary of body-snatching wraiths that might impersonate Nabumbo Promise, she whiles away time with the enigmatic neighbors--Sindano, the owner of a visitorless cafe, and Jentrix, the town's apothecary--who provide clues into the Brown family's deep links with the town's traumas; she also forms a powerful bond to free-spirited Mbiu, a motherless girl who observes Ayosa through the manor's windows. Nabumbo Promise returns at last, but her relationship with Ayosa grows thornier as the two clash over the painful rifts in their relationship and Nabumbo Promise begins to detach from reality. Debut author Oduor renders this fantastical world so tangibly it almost leaps off the page--a feat aided by her stunning language: A hornet's nest is an "enormous papery capsule writhing above them, full of murder and full of nectar"; Ayosa experiences "nights where her body unravel[s] from itself like yarn from a spool." There's a complex emotional current animating Ayosa's relationship with her mother as the two vacillate between disdain and desperate, intense love, lending the narrative a sense of momentum and depth. Though sometimes strained by an abundance of colorful characters, this novel is lively and original; it is a captivating journey from start to finish. A joy to read. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.