A deeply sad and moving account of one woman trying to navigate her grief and trying to make meaning, whether through science or religion.

Gifty is a neuroscience researcher at Stanford School of Medicine, studying patterns of addiction and reward-seeking behavior in mice. As the novel unfolds we discover that Gifty's studies have been triggered by the trauma of her brother's death. Nana was a gifted high-school athlete whose life turned upside down after an injury left him hooked on Oxycontin and desperately seeking another high, until he overdosed on heroin. As well as dealiing with her own grief over her brother's death, Gifty must also care for her suicidal mother who has flown from Alabama to take up residence in Gifty's bed.

The novel is incredibly poignant as Gifty looks to science, and the religion of her childhood, to make meaning of her family's suffering. As a scientist, and narrator, Gifty remains detatched, which creates an inherent tension in her attempt to process the traumas directly affecting her life. She meditates on both science and religion, not as antithetical beliefs, but as two different ways of making meaning and understanding the world. But neither quite suffice, and ultimately, it is only really through the act of writing her story down that she can finally navigate her grief and pay justice to her brother, perhaps achieving a kind of transcendence.

As if that wasn't enough for such a slim and concisely written book, we also see Gifty navigate her identity, wanting to be seen as a scientist, not a 'black woman scientist.' Racial identity is an undercurrent throughout the novel, as an immigrant Ghanaian family in the deep south of Alabama and Gifty notes the impact of racism on her father, who abandons the family to return to Ghana when Gifty is still a young child. As Gifty tries to balance and understand the aspects of her identity and family trauma, she also tries to live her life as any woman in her twenties - dating, finding friends and connecting with others.

Transcendent Kingdom is a very different novel to Homegoing, but is no less touching or beautifully written. Where the first novel is expansive, verging on epic, Transcendent Kingdom deals with the very minute. It is slower-paced and more meditative, it could almost feel claustrophobic, with time ricocheting around Gifty's childhood memories to the present day. Yaa Gyasi has a knack for building heart-wrenching stories which lay bare significant social traumas on a very personal level. Yet, while her novels are raw in their depiction of suffering they are ultimately hopeful too. Transcendent Kingdom is a quiter, more unassuming novel, but it promises to haunt you, transcending its own pages.

Gifty is a Ghanaian-American research neuroscientist, specialising in reward-seeking behaviour. She comes from a broken home, abandoned by her father, and riven by mental illness and tragedy. From an early age, Gifty was required to support her mother in crisis and, while the local pastor said that God never gives anybody a burden that they can't bear, Gifty is shattered by events, and abandons her mother's religion. She can never quite do so completely without abandoning her mother in her own mind, which makes for a difficult quandary for a medical student.

Gifty and the other characters are so real, and the story is told with such verisimilitude, that this feels like reading a memoir. It's no surprise to read at the end that Gyasi based it on a friend's experiences. This is a very affecting book that continually leaves you engrossed and willing Gifty on to a happy outcome.

One thing I would add is that the book contains details of animal experiments that may upset some readers.

Absolutely stunning - I've heard such amazing things about this book and it absolutely did not disappoint. I will be seeking out Yaa Gyasi's other writing in future.

This was a very interesting read, and it didn't take long for me to finish the book. However I dont think it left a very lasting impression, as it was some weeks ago since I read it, it hasn't left me feeling like this book impacted me or moved me for worse or for better.

I loved „Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi si I decides to request this book.
I quite enjoyed it but it wasn’t as brilliant as the prevous one. It took me aga to get to the end. The story wasn’t bad but it was lacking strong emotions.

I adored Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi's debut novel so was very excited but also a little anxious to read this "tricky second novel". Could it match the excellence of what had gone before. Oh yes it could, and then some.

Much like Homegoing, Yaa explores identity, inherited trauma, and the challenges of being part of a community that has its two feet planted in two very different cultures and communities. What excels most in this novel, Transcendent Kingdom, is how all this wide-ranging complex subject discussion is captured in a very specific focused story of a woman, Gifty, whose life and career as an introvert and scientist, has been shaped by the experience and difficulties of her childhood, growing up in a Ghanaian family in Alabama.

When we meet her, Gifty is a neuroscientist studying reward-seeking behaviour in mice, specifically the neural circuits of depression and addiction. An unusual focus, perhaps, but perhaps shaped by the death of her brother - many years before - of a heroin overdose, and her mother's ongoing battles with depression and defeat..

As we unravel Gifty's tangled past - her absent father, her battles with the evangelical church, and her reliance on her brother - so we find ourselves questioning how much of what we are today is designed by our past experiences. Is Gifty trying to right the wrongs of her childhood, to piece together the puzzle, or is that too simplistic an explanation? Is she more in control of her destiny than she believes?

Yass Gyasi has such a soothing writing style. She brings such comfort, sensitivity, and compassion to difficult characters and circumstances. There's a tendresse in her depiction of others; complicated figures are never reductive or simplistic. Fault is not straightforward and her willingness to portray life as an unpredictable mix of science, fate, and faith is beautifully rendered.

I enjoyed this book - but it was a bit slower than Homegoing, also by the same author, so I didn't enjoy it quite as much. However, it was moving and explored themes of diaspora, mental health and generational trauma very well.

Gifty is a talented and smart scientist, who studies addiction in mice in California to help fuel her understanding of the opoid addiction that has hit America (and her family) hard. One day she gets a call from the church pastor back in Alabama to say her mother is sick again with her mental health, which happened once before after Gifty's brother died from his addiction. Gifty brings her mother to live with her and as she struggles to help her mother get better, we learn through flashbacks what brought Gifty's parents from Ghana to Alabama and how their family of 4 turned into a family of 2.

The book touches upon many different topics, such as immigrants in America, race, addiction and religion. The observations were really well done but sometimes it wasn't really explored deeply. I thought most of the characters were well done, I could imagine them all and could clearly see Gifty's childhood. And I did feel for her family and their circumstances. However I felt like in the present, we don't get to see a lot of Gifty herself, despite being the narrator. She felt closed off, quite possibly by design given the story and her upbringing. But it felt hard to warm to her or even know her. The book felt quite clinical at times, which again, given the way Gifty is and also her work, does make sense. The plot jumps around a bit, the present timeline is only a week or two, whereas the past goes from before Gifty's birth to when she first goes away to college. And the flashbacks are not chronological, which I wasn't a fan of. The books talks heavily about religion and science, especially the intersection of these and I did not relate to either topic. Overall I don't think this was the book for me, I didn't look forward to picking it up and reading, which is usually a bad sign for me. A lot of care went into this novel though and it is well crafted. So I can see why people have really liked this book. I think it might resonate more with someone who has ties to spirituality and faith

Yaa Gyasi's debut novel, Homegoing, is perhaps my favourite book of all time. Needless to say I was excited when I picked up Transcendent Kingdom. Transcendent Kingdom is a completely different book to Homegoing, spanning a much shorter amount of time, and focusing almost entirely on one character, Gifty, and her life experiences. Nevertheless, similar to Homegoing, it left me with many unanswered questions about Gifty. I think that this is purposeful, and means that the information we are given is both memorable and poignant, yet, I left the book feeling rather detached from Gifty and the characters in the book.

The novel has been both praised and criticised for it's handling of topics such as race, drug addiction, grief and religion and Gyasi covers an awful lot in the course of the book. I do not feel, however, that she adds anything particularly new or important. to the discussion, but perhaps she does not mean too, and instead we see only how Gifty has experienced all these things.

I'm not particularly a fan of the ending, which seems abrupt and to tie everything up in too neat a bow.

In conclusion, Transcendent Kingdom is another beautiful book from Gyasi, and I would very much recommend it to anyone. It does not, however, live up to Homegoing for me, and with it's slow-pacing and the difficulty I found in connecting with the characters, it did take me a while to get through.

I haven’t read the authors previous novel so this was a new author for me and it definitely didn’t disappoint .
It’s a very quiet reflective book with no great climax as such but this isn’t needed as the writing is superb and you just get lost in Gifty’s life and thoughts .
Gifty was born in Ghana and raised in Alabama and is studying neuroscience focusing on a study on mice to find answers to behavioural addictions . Her desire to find answers comes after the death of her brother caused by an addiction to opioids .
The novel looks at religion, addiction , depression and science as well as life as an immigrant in the US .
It would make a great book club read and leaves you with plenty of thoughts , I’ll be sure to pick up her first novel now .

I loved this book. Gyasi's writing is just perfect, so absorbing and impressive. the characters are built so deeply that it's not possible not to care for them. Loved the story. Highly recommended.

I was obsessed by Homegoing and to be able to read her follow-up novel- wow, thank you! I can’t say how much I enjoyed this and how drawn in I was. I still think of this book every day since I’ve finished it and would read it again and again.

Brilliant and elegiac, this novel expresses so much about the issues that face modern Americans. Race, religion and the immigrant experience are under the microscope, and Gyasi's observations hit hard. It's at once hopeful and traumatic, a delicate balance achieved by the author's talent and expertise.

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021, Transcendent Kingdom is a popular choice right now. You may have heard of Yaa Gyasi from her debut novel, Homegoing. Her novels delve deep into sociological and emotional issues and will grasp you by both hands.

Transcendent Kingdom tells the story of Gifty, a neuro scientist who is looking after her mother. It flicks between the past and present day. It isn’t an easy read necessarily, it explores some deep traumas such as drug abuse, depression and family breakdowns. Having grown up in a Christian household, her family rely heavily on religion to get through day-to-day life, having a career in science threatens what she has learnt about religion and the cycle of life. Gifty is overshadowed for most of her life by her older brother Nana, he can do no wrong, a superstar at sports and the parents favourite she is always in the background. After an accident playing sports, Nana is prescribed a heavy painkiller and becomes addicted. He is getting countless career opportunities but the addiction weighs over him. A few traumatic family events lead to Gifty looking after her mother by herself.
Gifty trains in neuro Science to study reward seeking behaviour in a bid to find out why her brother became addicted to drugs. She is hoping to get comfort for her and her mother. Science prys her apart from religion, when God gave her no answers.

Yaa Gyasi can do no wrong in my eyes. Home Going was one of my favourite reads last year, but I think this one just beats it. This was such a gorgeously woven narrative about a mother grieving the brother she lost to addiction and the mother trapped in her depression. It was a wonderfully sad and thoughtful novel that questions religion and science in the face of familial loss, that really hit me hand. Gloriously written and crafted, I’d absolutely recommend this to everyone.

"The truth is we don’t know what we don’t know. We don’t even know the questions we need to ask in order to find out, but when we learn one tiny little thing, a dim light comes on in a dark hallway, and suddenly a new question appears. We spend decades, centuries, millennia, trying to answer that one question so that another dim light will come on. That’s science, but that’s also everything else, isn’t it? Try. Experiment. Ask a ton of questions."

What happens to questions that cannot be answered by either God or Science? Especially one of grief and personal loss that redefines your life.

In this deep book, we meet Gifty - a neuroscientist who is working on mice to control their reward seeking behaviour. When she gets a call at work saying her mom's depression is worsening, she brings her to stay with her thus opening the doors to her past and her beliefs. Her Ghana origins makes her a loner in Alabama and none of her colleagues know of her absent father and her dear brother who dies of opoid overdose.

The book asks more questions than it tries to answer. In a well observed depiction of churches and the role they play in spiritual guidance - the book explains how faith is a salve for people. To make sense of life.

Gifty herself explains her complicated journey to where she has reached battling doubts, debacles and the past preserved in her journal entries. There are many complex themes explored without drawing attention - like racism, settlement and identity. The writing is powerful and having not read Homegoing, I understand the author's prowess.

The only problem with the book is that it lingers a lot on the suffering. Trascendental it may be, but it is definitely no hurry. A good read.

Note: Thank you Netgalley and Penguin UK for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you’re considering reading this book then do. It is a powerful, moving, and intimate depiction of Ghanaian family living in Alabama. It’s a gorgeous narrative, and although it is difficult to read at times because of the pain within the story, it creates an intense and thoughtful novel. Another incredible book following on from Homegoing.

This is a wonderful book. It very much desrves its shortlisting for the Woman's Prize. Even though it is very much an American story, it also portrays the heart of Ghana.. A spectacular read.

Thankyou for sending me this ARC.

I really enjoyed Transcendent Kingdom. It's definitely a character driven book, but I still found it very gripping. Gifty felt like a very real character, and despite a large part of the book being about religion which I don't relate to, I still found Gifty a very relatable character. I did find the very ending was too fast and suddenly everything was sorted out, I felt like it didn't necessarily need that tidy ending. Overall though, very glad I read it.

I was so looking forward to this as I loved HOMEGOING, but I struggled to get through it and didn't love the story.

(Review not posted elsewhere)