Title : What The Fireflies Knew
Author : Kai Harris
Narrators : Zenzi Williams
Genre : Contemporary, Coming-of-age
Listening Length : 8 hours 35 minutes
Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Narrator Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What The Fireflies Knew is a coming-of-age novel. It’s about 11 year old Kenyatta Bernice (or KB as she’s called) and her 14 year old sister Nia who are sent to live with their grandfather as their mother works through a difficult time.
The entire novel, and I’m listening to it, not reading it, is told from KB’s point of view. So it’s in the first person and it’s her perspective of events as they unfold. Young Kenyatta feels unsettled. She doesn’t know a lot of the adult stuff that’s going on, but much of it has gone wrong recently. She feels the physicality of it though as they often change their place of residence, first – the house in Detroit, then the car, and now Grandaddy’s place in Lansing.
The more we move around, the more I forget stuff. Like the pattern of my wallpaper in the old house on the dead-end street. I’m starting to forget what it feels like to have a home at all.
KB feels like she’s losing the people she loves one by one – first it was her daddy, then her mother bids them goodbye leaving them in Lansing, promising to come retrieve them in the summer (but will she?). She’s always had older sister Nia to lean on, but now Nia is distant, harps on about getting some privacy and prefers the company of her friends. Why is her world so turbulent? KB gleans a little information from granddaddy who is the taciturn sort, not given to displays of affection. But it’s patchy information – and all KB really wants is for everyone to not treat her like a baby and for her mother to be back, and for them to be a family again.
Daddy’s gone, Momma’s gone. Nia’s still here, but she might as well be gone, too.
Now, when I started the book it seemed interesting enough, and I kind of went along with it. What sucked me in though was Kenyatta’s character. She’s innocent and endearing, a believer in the goodness of others. She’s sad that mamma has left them, but she’s also excited about the here and now – the picnic tomorrow, her upcoming Birthday, the new book Granddaddy bought her. I was invested in her good health and happiness.
There are only a few main characters in this book, KB, Nia, their mom and grandaddy, and the events in the book are just interplays between these characters. But that interplay! Author Harris so skillfully conveys the emotion, the hidden undercurrents when two of her characters meet, talk and play. Like when KB attempts to be friends with the kids next door. Or when Granddaddy’s explains to KB on why he and mamma don’t get along.
Underneath it all though, the story is about family, race, growing up In an unfamiliar world and finding your footing. And learning to be whole again in spite of all the brokenness inside of you. Quite a lovely book. Highly recommended.
The narrator has done a fabulous, fabulous job. She’s perfect as the naive KB, petulant as teenager Nia, tired as their mamma, and plodding and slow as plainspeakinug Granddaddy. Her spot-on narration just sucks you in to the story. I could’ve listened for hours and I did.
