Title
of book: The Invincible Will
Author: Amadi Ekwutosilam Njoku
Publisher: AA-Peters Expressions, Nigeria
Year
published: 2021
Pages: 128
Reviewer: Adjekpagbon Blessed Mudiaga
In its various short and long total
of twenty chapters that culminates in 128 pages, the author entertains the
reader with many events that shape the lifestyle of both urban and rural
students from primary to secondary school level on one hand, and the childhood
dreams they desire to fulfill in physical realities on the other.
The settings of the story are
Amasiri village in Ebonyi State, in South - Eastern region, and Sasa community
in Lagos State, South - Western, Nigeria. Through the central character's
ambition to become a successful sprinter in athletics, the author weaves a very
engaging story that elicits the importance of holding firm to one's ambition in
life, while striving to get it fulfilled even if the entire world writes you
off as a mere dreamer, due to your body size - whether short, tall, fat or
slim.
Despite Achebe's diminutive height
like a Lilliputian, and the discouraging remarks by some folks, concerning his
ambition to become an acclaimed sprinter through participation in athletic
events, he remains resolute in his iron will to succeed, even when some dream
killers think he is building a castle in the air.
In his resolve to put his name on
the shelf of Sprint's Galaxy, he did not just hang his hope on only praying or
wishful thinking. Hence, his invincible will to succeed, lands him in El Dorado
at last. He wins multiple medals through inter-secondary school relays
organized by the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Sports.
In light of the issues raised in the
novel, there are many lessons one could learn. Whether as a student, parent, or
educational psychologist, different portions of the storyline are laced with
various relatable life occurrences that one can identify with, concerning the
character and behaviour of students at school and home. For instance, Lotanna,
one of Achebe's classmates belongs to the category of students that are
over-pampered by their parents, which makes them become spoiled and arrogant at
school. Ugonna, Lawal, and Dapo are symbols of good friends and well-wishers
within and outside school environments. Kelvin is an incurable bully from God
knows where. And Segun represents humble senior students who assist junior ones
to succeed in their commendable ambition. Therefore, the characters in the
novella are well differentiated in their individual traits.
By and large, the diction of the
author is quite entertaining with very rich figurative expressions, idioms, and
some commonly used Nigerian - style pidgin or street language jingoism. These
make the reader laugh or smile from time to time, as the atmosphere and
reasoning pattern of both junior and senior students are beamed on. Apart from
being a very good material for both junior and senior students, it is also
important for adults, especially parents to read it too.
However, there is a saying that
"No work of art is perfect." Hence, though some defects noticed in
the text may not be the author's fault, there is a need to correct them during
reprint. One of the errors includes graphic noise on pages 14 and 16, which
contains the same paragraph, probably caused during the laying of the text on
the Coreldraw page maker file by the graphic artist given that responsibility
in the process of text arrangement on a computer screen before printing.
There is also semantic noise on page
24 caused by the omission of two alphabets "li" from the word
"living" in the first paragraph of that page. The paragraph starts
with "Ving," as a word, which makes the sentence and sweet flow of
the story temporarily disjointed at that point. It is an indication of another
blunder by the page graphic artist, who haphazardly copied it from God knows
where in Chapter Four and dumped it like that. The graphics stylistics whereby
the first two, three, or four words at the beginning of every chapter’s
sentence are written in capital letters is not ideal for any type of book
publication. The law of sentence uniformity does not encourage such blatant
configuration by any graphic artist capitalization of a group of two, three, or
four words at the beginning of any chapter or paragraph. Every sentence must
begin with a capital letter, not a group of two, three, or four words as
noticed at the beginning of each chapter of the novella. It is a sign of sheer
ignorance on the part of the graphics arranger in formatting text.
Nonetheless, the beauty of the
printing is that the book contains no mechanical or channel noise, which makes
reading it quite clear and entertaining despite the psychological noise created
by the graphics artist or text arranger in page planning and formatting.
The author's other works include
"Eras Literature - in - English (Critical Analysis) for Secondary
Schools" and "Echoes of Our Voices (Collection of poems)." He is
a member of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Lagos Chapter.
END
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