Solo

Solo by Kwame Alexander

Essential points: This novel in verse ranges far and wide without ever going deep. Protagonist Blade is the son of Rutherford Morrison, an erstwhile rockstar ravaged by addiction to both drugs and alcohol which he uses to assuage the grief he’s felt ever since the death of Blade’s mother, Sunny. Filled with angst, Blade spends most of his time with his girlfriend, Chapel, hating his family and writing music until—in a burst of barely developed plot twists—Blade learns that he’s adopted, Chapel dumps him for her old boyfriend, and Blade sets off for Ghana to track down his birth mother. The novel continues on much in this vein, introducing not only a new love interest, Joy, but also a problematic traipse through the Ghanaian countryside that serves as a kind of “quest” through which Blade reconciles with his life story—with his rockstar father (who drops out of the sky into rural Ghana) completing the journey alongside him. While the threads of the novel that focus on rock and roll, family, and the power of forgiveness are promising, they are unfortunately swallowed by hundreds of pages of verse that verge on the melodramatic far more than the lyrical. This being said, some readers may find the dramatic tale of family- and self-discovery satisfying, and the book is an accessible, fast-moving read. Subjects this book includes that some readers may be sensitive to (but which others will be thrilled to find discussed in their literature!): death; drug addiction; alcoholism. NB: while Blade’s blackness is implied, race is never explicitly discussed in Solo.