London Poor, is a novel about love in a time of poverty and inspiration. The protagonist an Igbo born in Merseyside and brought up in Belfast by professional parents who seeks a career as a young man in London, but falls into despair and becomes an artist fighting demons and dreams alike. He meets Sibby a Jamaican English woman younger than he with the merest blush of almond skin. She is a curator at the Courtauld where he falls in love. The two of them through ordinary days explore their sexuality, inhibitions, and prejudices, and aspire to joy, pure joy. as the novel unfolds through the arts and work, and home and street life, London becomes a place where a man might save his soul and a woman be taken to paradise. There is nothing artificial about this novel, it is a work of fiction, but realistic in nature.
Strengths:
• Vivid description, juxtapositions
• "I was burning with lust and fear, as a mentally insane, unemployed upper middle class" (9)
• "My heart felt so big, it filled the whole room, I thought I was in love; with this Nwoke or a moment!" (27)
• "The charcoal snapped several times and the portrait looked like a jigsaw of, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, chin and forehead, and lips" (34-35)
