Don't look for any periods in Memoirs of a Porcupine, Alain Mabanckou's rushing, frothing, darkly comic narrative. It's a one-sentence, madcap plunge into African lore with a porcupine harmful double (like a spirit animal, only more wicked) telling his sad story--the tale of his human counterpart's short, murderous life--to a baobab tree.
The tale begins with the porcupine narrator defying the old patriarch of the porcupines, and his brave defection to the village of the child Kibandi. The boy's father drags his 10-year-old son off into the forest and forces him to drink a potion called mayamvumbi. His harmful double, the porcupine, stays hidden outside the village and goes to him only late at night for special missions.
By age 17, Kibandi has become a skinny, intelligent, inquisitive young man who has learned everything there is to know about roofing. Though he sets out to be different from his father, his harmful double makes his life just as murderous. Brick makers and palm wine tappers fall from the porcupine's quills, as well as pretty girls who refuse Kibandi's advances, postmen, farmers and tam-tam makers. Even the blind old witch doctor who knows the dark arts can't stand up to him. Slowly these deaths become more and more disturbing, but Kibandi and his harmful double continue to rampage unchecked until he makes one mistake, ignoring a basic prohibition of Congolese magic: never attack twins.
Although this is the chronicle of an unstoppable serial killer, Mabanckou keeps it light and haunting, a tale to amuse adults and terrify children on long dark jungle nights. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle