Transforming a story collection into a laboratory for experimentation

Rémy Ngamije is a multihyphenate: Rwanda-born and Namibia-raised, he went to university in South Africa and is not only a writer of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, but also an educator, editor, photographer and founder of Doek, a Namibian arts organization; Namibia’s first literary magazine; and the biennial Doek Literary Festival. His desire for and investment in building community through these endeavors doesn’t necessarily infuse his fiction consciously, but it’s nevertheless echoed in the pages of his second book, “Only the Stars Know the Meaning of Space,” a polyvocal collection that often emphasizes group dynamics and relationships over individuals. Subtitled “A Literary Mixtape,” this book of fiction is not a straightforward short-story collection nor a novel-in-stories, but instead alternates between one through-line narrative — the A-Side — and 10 semi-independent stories — the B-Side.

(Gallery/Scout)

The A-Side follows a writer whose parents named him The Way, the Goal, the Destination on the Horizon, but whose friends call him Rambo. He’s about to turn 30 in the first story, “The Hope, the Prayer, and the Anthem (Or, the Fall So Far),” which serves as an introduction of sorts as he lays out the biggest parts of his life: his literary dreams and ambitions (to be headlining literary events and rumored to be having an affair with Zadie Smith); his parents’ love story (they met at a discotheque and it was love at first dance) and his mother’s relatively recent death; his ride-or-die friends (Franco, Rinzlo, Lindo and Cicero — hence the need for the writer to be given a nickname with an O at its end); his ex-girlfriend (he’s not over her); the things he’s spent his 20s doing instead of writing (sleeping around, reading, learning salsa, teaching). “You’re twenty-nine, fam,” he says toward the end of the story, with a “ paperback to your name.” True, and he hasn’t been diligently writing, but he’s done the other thing that writers are encouraged to do: live.

Opinion

A woman’s journey with the Black Panthers reveals the momentum — and dangers — of activism

Fabienne Josaphat’s vivid, bracing novel ‘The Kingdom of No Tomorrow’ captures the rhetoric and hyperbole of the Black Power movement.

Dec. 2, 2024

Throughout the book, the A-Side stories expand on elements hinted at or briefly mentioned in the first story. His mother’s death looms large throughout these, with the piece right in the middle of the book, “Tornado (or, The Only Poem You Ever Wrote),” confronting the awful night when he was summoned to the hospital at 3 a.m. by his brother. Still, the tone of most of the A-Side stories is lighthearted, with the writer being an undeniably funny narrator (whose first few stories are in the second-person “you” voice and the rest are in first person).

In “Yog’hurt (or, Just Breathe),” for instance, the writer is at a yoga class with his girlfriend — an attempt to appease her by spending time doing “her things” and not only his — and he is extremely skeptical. He’s no stranger to using his muscles at the gym but is convinced that yoga is largely nonsense. “You figure half of making it through the session is pretending,” he narrates. “There is no way everyone in this class understands what is happening. It feels like being back in post-modernism lectures with everyone saying they understand Derrida.” When the class gets to Warrior Pose, he thinks of it as “just a lunge that went to private school,” while Warrior Two is “nothing but stretching with a view.”

Opinion

Portrait of a quiet marriage, or of America’s simmering tensions?

Weike Wang’s rueful and tender third novel, ‘Rental House,’ uses humorous insights on race and class to plunge into themes of loneliness and despair.

Nov. 29, 2024

The writer’s trajectory is largely one of growth and maturity, with each story focusing on a different aspect of his life such as the girlfriend and the breakup, a woman he was involved with who always showed up with bruises from her gangster boyfriend, the era when his teenage self became tired of getting into fistfights and started going to the library instead (and then got his friends to fall for books too). There are some questions left open, and some minor inconsistencies — especially around the major ex-girlfriend — that reveal that the stories weren’t necessarily written to go together. All but one of the pieces have been published before; quite a few won, or were shortlisted for, prestigious awards. But the writer’s narrative still works and allows for the slippage of memory and the different, shifting versions we all have of important moments in our lives.

Many of the B-Side stories seem to be entirely unrelated to the A-Side narrative in terms of plot or characters. “Wicked,” for example, follows a woman in Nairobi having an affair with a married man who goes to the U.N. refugee center in Dadaab, Kenya, every month to see whether his wife and daughter have shown up there. “Annus Horribilis” is a beautiful and stylish piece about a couple’s first and terrible year that is mostly told through a six-page sentence full of parentheticals — and while it’s tempting to try to fit the writer and his ex into the piece, it’s clearly not about them.

Then there are the ones that clearly do link up to the A-Side in some way: “Seven Silences of the Heart,” for instance, is narrated by the spirit of the writer’s miscarried would-be sibling, and “Granddaughter of the Octopus” ends up being about the writer’s great-grandmother.

What’s striking about quite a few of the stories — A- and B-sides alike — is the way they focus on groups of people moving through life together, for better and for worse. Two especially striking stand-alones are “The Neighborhood Watch,” about a group of people living under a bridge in Windhoek, Namibia, who work together to collect food and material goods in order to survive, and “Important Terminology for Military-Age Males,” about the horrors committed by South African Defense Force soldiers during the years-long South African Border War (also known as the Namibian War of Independence).

Ngamije is undeniably an excellent stylist, able to delight, amuse and horrify in equal measure, and “Only the Stars Know the Meaning of Space,” which feels more connected and cohesive the further you read, is an exciting and fresh approach to a work of collected fictions.

Ilana Masad is a books and culture critic and author of “All My Mother’s Lovers.”