The setup here feels almost too overt: grad-school student Gifty takes up research to understand the trauma and tragedy of her family. In practice, though, it’s a meditation on religious belief and how it both sustains and fails us—something I deeply relate to as someone raised in a deeply religious family.
Gyasi’s story flits back and forth between the past and present but rarely felt overly formal, structure-wise. It is a measure of her skill that even though you know some of the characters’ fates beforehand, you still hope that the telling will prove those false somehow.