Moonbeam is comprehensive. Virtually all the concerning situations in which the average individual is enmeshed, no matter their circumstance, are given. The stories are practically down-to-earth investigations of personal struggles, and collective depressions. More importantly, the stretch of the narratives remains within the province of the literary brilliance exclusive to the short story
By Kẹ̀hìndé Fọlọ́runshọ́
EVERY age has a depression of its time which is found in the artistic integrity of its writers. The artist – be it poet, novelist, or playwright – explores the agencies of that change through realistic elements. In the case of the short story, the subject matter is stylised into some economy of literary ingredients. This therefore positions Moonbeam as an intriguing anthology that underscores not just a popular derivative of socio-cultural failures but personal experiences of their impact.
Moonbeam is a collection of experiences, an anthology by Nigeria’s foremost culture journalists. Set in Nigeria’s notable cities across the North and the West, the stories follow the grief, loss, elusive dreams, and existential failures of their protagonists under certain conditions of disillusionment. At the heart of the anthology is inner conflict. X’s condition in one story is similar to Y’s circumstance in another, creating a penumbral submission of a broken generation. In this way, it is almost impossible for at least one of the stories to not resonate with the reader as a background insight into their lived and shared experience of family and social declensions. But more so is the influence of culture. Moonbeam is thus a fine blend of stories which investigate the grip of tradition, the angst of modernity, and the conflicts of contemporary society.
The most gripping feature of the anthology is its organic unity. Every story brings its protagonist in a biting conflict with their immediate world; they try to spearhead their way out of the abject disenchantment with certain systems. As given in the compendium, there are layers of traditional and cultural obscurities which affect the characters’ contemporary world. Only in not more than three entries do the writers implicitly finger the political system for its overreaching degradation of human capital to the socio-economic development of the narrator’s society. The reader also experiences a sound comprehensiveness about the collection, in terms of the demography represented. This means that while one writer details women’s experiences under a hostile customary given, another explores the fantasies of young adulthood, and others the agony of an unfulfilled existence. The degrees and manifestations of these occurrences are an opulent delivery of narrative textures.
Closely related to this is the literariness of the entries. Of course, the short story is distinguished by its ability to achieve a certain magnitude with its compact narration. Therefore, the metaphors, smiles, and symbols orchestrate the reader’s experience of the essays. More importantly, the economy of space and words provides a consciousness of raw literature which is exclusive to the short story. A luminary example is Sacrifice, which tells in a few minutes the continuing discourse of political knavery – a fabric of Africa’s lament from which writers have cut their pieces of rendition. It would seem that African leaders are tactfully committed to the project of underdevelopment. While this remains a digestible nugget, a plethora of possible impacts on the reader is clearly effected by the stories. Perhaps the greatest of that signification is suspense. It is the effective deployment of this technique that affords the entries the equivalent of a novel, in addition to other techniques that facilitate the plurality of the protagonist’s representation.
Ajeluorou edited Moonbeam is way beyond that nomenclature of emerging narratives; it is a foregrounding of viable traditional modes and patterns in what bearers of a value system believe about a world that works. For context, some of the stories are an exploration of traditional givens. Within that landscape, there is the quest for an explainable escape from the elusiveness of erstwhile constructs. And it is compelling how the writers yoke their suspense in the seeming irresolution of these backgrounds. The writers create a griot-like approach to the very issues that may unsettle us in today’s reality: the predictions have been drawn from the immediate post-modernist angst.
The intrigues, therefore, are no strange occurrences. They are the intricate nexus of two successive generations under the same climate of an almost insoluble anxiety. At this rate, the title becomes a critical viewpoint of what the reader is to expect; or what they conceive. It is either a peep into the future or a flashback from the past. This would pass for the metaphor of the title which in itself is a cursory evaluation of the meeting points. The argument here is that the voice, tone, and mood of the stories, when taken as a unitary portraiture, belong indeed to the ilk of realistic individuals who have much to grapple with about the changes – or transitions – that alter their revered realities. This precisely is the germ of characterisation in the stories; the verisimilitude is much too palpable to be disputed as an authentic creation of socio-conscious writers.
It is no mean feat the themes are immediate deductions of the inescapable. To be sure, the first and the last stories are similar in context and predominant theme but only differ in the cultural aspects. Even so, the emphasis on the protagonists’ hubris and self-contempt shows that the tragedy of modern society is self-immolation as a result of an intractable condition. Among others are themes such as grief, savage customs, the expense of civilisation, the failure of politics, ethnic hostility, and betrayal. The essays achieve the same exoteric situations which the novel will depict in its license to a great number of episodes, scenes and other defining elements.
Finally, Moonbeam is comprehensive. Virtually all the concerning situations in which the average individual is enmeshed, no matter their circumstance, are given. The stories are practically down-to-earth investigations of personal struggles, and collective depressions. More importantly, the stretch of the narratives remains within the province of the literary brilliance exclusive to the short story. The brevity encompasses the length of appreciation associated with the novel. Another momentous property about the text, which needs to be emphasised, is the language and style. Differing from writer to writer, the language and the style of expression are suited to all audiences. It is this fine blend of status-free representations that provides for a universality of the predicaments that move us to the core of human essence.
- Fọlọ́runshọ́, a recent graduate of English from the University of Lagos, won the Ken Saro-Wiwa Review Prize 2025 based on Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross. The prize is administered by Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) and sponsored by NLNG