Oyinda Loves Books

Title: A Broken People’s Playlist
Author: Chimeka Garricks
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐.5

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This was one book I’d seen getting a lot of hype on Naija Bookstagram, and I decided to take the plunge and buy my copy. It was really worth it, and I loved it so so much. I’m not the biggest fan of short story collections, but this one really enchanted me.

A collection of 12 amazing stories inspired by songs (each story’s title is the song that inspired it), and here are my faves (the number is story’s number in the collection).
1 – Lost Stars: A tragic story of a love accepted too late. Being the first story, the fact that I loved it so much inspired me to gobble up the rest of the book!
3 – Hurt: A burial arranged for a brother that’s dying, and the discovery of his checkered past. This one really hit me hard.
4 – Song For Someone: This one was really amazing cause I loved how free and fierce the main character was.
6 – I Put A Spell On You: Yes to jazzing Nigerian men LMAO. I laughed so hard at the end of this story (PSA: I don’t jazz Nigerian men please).
9 – River: A warning tale about cultism and confraternities in Nigerian universities.
10 – Love’s Divine: This was a very nice story, and I was able to predict one of the twists in this story. The way the author was able to connect it to Hurt (story 3) was so so amazing.

Chimeka Garricks had an amazing writing style that flowed so well, and I loved how he connected some of the stories to each other. There was one secondary character, Tonse, who kept popping up in various stories. I’d smile a little every time his name got mentioned.

This is an amazing book, and I highly recommend it.

Blurb:

A Broken People’s Playlist is a collection of short stories with underlying themes so beautifully woven that each story flows into the other seamlessly. From its poignant beginning in “Lost Stars” a story about love and it’s fleeting, transient nature to the gritty, raw musical prose encapsulated in “In The City”, a tale of survival set in the alleyways of the waterside. A Broken People’s Playlist is a mosaic of stories about living, loving and hurting through very familiar sounds, in very familiar ways and finding healing in the most unlikely places.

The stories are also part-homage and part-love letter to Port Harcourt (the city which most of them are set in). The prose is distinctive as it is concise and unapologetically Nigerian. And because the collection is infused with the magic of evocative storytelling, everyone is promised a story, a character, to move or haunt them.

The Author:

Chimeka Garricks was born in Dublin, and raised in Port Harcourt (the city which, like all first loves, still inexplicably holds his heart). He is the author of the acclaimed novel, ‘Tomorrow Died Yesterday’. He started writing short stories, and eventually, ‘A Broken People’s Playlist’ to avoid working on his second novel. He would rather choose soundtracks for movies or be a DJ, but lawyering, and, erm, writing a second novel stand in his way. He lives with his wife and three children in Lagos.