The Furrows: An Elegy has a high literary experimental structure — nothing is straightforward or what it seems — and as such, I don’t relish being the novel’s first reviewer; I don’t know if I totally “got” this. I will say that as an examination of grief and mourning and memory and reality, I was deeply touched by many scenes. And as an exploration of the African American experience — double consciousness (as defined by W.E.B. Dubois), code-switching, class discrimination and incarceration — I am receptive to whatever Zambian-born, Baltimore-raised author (and Harvard professor of English) Namwali Serpell wants to share. Because this narrative is so slippery and surprising, I am loath to reveal too much about it, but I will say that if the first part seems to get a little repetitive, hang tight: part two switches to a different point-of-view, with a different structure and vibe. Serpell tells us several times here, “I don’t want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt,” and that’s exactly what she has accomplished: The Furrows reveals the lived experience of a person without the actual details of that person’s life being terribly important. Probably genius, and therefore over my head; completely recommend.