TITLE: Till Death Do Us Part

AUTHOR: Diana Mosoba

PUBLISHER: Self

REVIEWER: Mbugua Ngunjiri

AVAILABILITY: shop.eKitabu.com and ‘On eKitabu’ app

PRICE: Ksh450 (Audiobook); Ksh1,000 (Print).

When Kenyan publishers got their hands too full with curriculum materials (good for them), book lovers were worried that cultural writing, which includes fiction, would be dealt a fatal blow.

Many are the manuscripts that were shunted aside or rejected altogether and along the way, writers grew dejected. Happily, though, nature abhors a vacuum and that is how the rebirth of self-publishing ushered in a new crop of writers who could not be deterred, confident in their storytelling skills .

These writers, a majority of them young, have restored faith in Kenyan writing; we can now entertain dreams of challenging Nigerian writers, which seemed a pipe dream only a few years back.

I grew somewhat apprehensive when word filtered out that young writers were churning out self-published books at the rate of one book per week. As a book reviewer, I had, not just on one occasion, encountered badly written and poorly edited books. If publishers, with all the resources at their disposal, could produce such sorry stuff, then these youngsters, with their self-published texts, would surely kill us, or so I thought.

This was my main concern when, in late 2021, I met Denis Mucheru, the chief librarian at Alliance Française. This is where these authors were given a free venue to launch their books. Although there were a few concerns here and there—nothing to get alarmed about—my fears were quashed when I started reading these books.

Young Writers

Diana Mosoba joins the impressive and growing list of young writers who are giving book lovers good value for their money and who are making the visit to the bookstore—Nuria, where else?—a pleasant experience.

When Mosoba’s book Till Death Do Us Part came out, she hit the ground running, marketing her book on social media; she even went to Zambia, by bus, to promote it. It helps that she has a sizeable following on Facebook, which she exploited to push the message out there.

As the noise about Mosoba’s book got louder, I made a mental note of squeezing it in my long waiting list of to-read books. That was until I came across an ill-tempered review of Till Death Do Us Part on the same social media streets Mosoba was marketing her book.

That review now made reading this book an urgent affair.

Having since read Till Death Do Us Part, I am now convinced that the reviewer, who generated quite a buzz on Facebook, had not read the book. More on this later…

Mosoba has not only woven a highly readable story, she has managed to infuse lessons on domestic/gender-based violence into a love story without being too preachy. She narrates the sad tale of Tara, a single mother working in Nairobi who meets and falls for a dashing young man working as a mechanic and moonlighting as a club deejay.

Unknown to Tara, Joe, the object of her fancy, has a dark past and even darker character. One thing leads to another and she finds herself expecting Joe's child.

In the intervening period, she had noticed some disturbing qualities in Joe's character; he was a man given to explosive anger. Psychologists will tell you that a person who does not know how to control their anger is a red flag in any relationship.

In Tara's case, red flags were there from the very beginning. The first time the red mist swept over Joe was when he saw her with a male colleague from work. That evening, she was the recipient of a number of blows, requiring her to apply make-up to mask the 'dents' on her face.

Red Flags

Joe's reaction after the burst of violence? Profuse apologies followed by pledges to go into anger management therapy.;]

Despite these worrying signs—the second time she received belt lashes on her bare back—Tara not only conceives, she enthusiastically accepts Joe's marriage proposal.

When the Swahili sages said that sikio la kufa halisikii dawa, they must have had Tara in mind. Despite all the signs that this was a doomed relationship and repeated warnings from friends, colleagues and even her parents, she still went ahead with the hurriedly arranged wedding and even moved to Joe's parents' home in Karen.

Tara's marriage to Joe effectively marks the second and more violent phase of this relationship. Four deaths later, Tara is rescued from the evil cesspool that is the Hinga household by a woman who had been employed to take care of her, but not without life threatening injuries.

When the reader finds themselves getting angry at Tara for staying in this abusive relationship, it is testimony that the author has done a splendid job of bringing out how victims of abuse, like Tara, behave. They stick to these abusive unions in the vain hope that their abusers would reform. They also stick around for the sake of the marriage or the children. The victims go as far as shutting out friends and relatives who have cautioned against  the abuse.

In Joe, Mosoba brings out the ultimate profile of an abusive partner: insecure, jealous, manipulative, controlling and yes, violent.

This book is recommended reading for anyone over 18—it contains some steamy adult scenes— from anyone contemplating getting into a relationship, couples in existing unions, to parents with children about to get into relationships. Tara's experience should serve as a warning for people to be on the lookout for red flags, so vividly painted in the book.

One small thing though; given the bad blood between Joe and his elder brother, how did the latter manage to spirit Tara's son to her parents' rural home without invoking Joe's ire?

The book is written in an easy conversational style and the editing is equally on point. For a self-published book, Mosoba must be commended for sparing no expenses when it comes to printing; such is the quality of paper used both on the cover and in the inside.

With people like Mosoba, the future of Kenyan writing is in safe hands.

Finally, how did I tell that the sensationalist reviewer of Till Death Do Us Part had not read the book? Simple, they only “reviewed” the book's cover illustration; nothing about the book.