The Camel Bookmobile Book

Have you ever gotten so angry after reading a book that you wanted to 1) throw it out of a moving car 2) tear all the pages into itsy bitsy pieces or 3) make a effigy of the author with the pages of the book and burn it. Okay, the Camel Bookmobile was not terrible. The writing wasn't bad. The characters weren't off-putting. The story wasn't unpleasant. And yet it made me so angry! That's because it could have been so much more! I picked up this book at a second hand bookstore while on holiday and it held so much of promise. A book about a American librarian travelling to remotest Africa to bring literature to nomadic tribes. It seems magic! It could have taken us on a journey of what it is like to read a book for the first time. It could have been about the experience of children learning to read or even understanding what books are. It could gone deeper and explored the idea of what rural communities can teach the 'western' world i.e., the importance of traditional knowledge systems. It could have asked the question of whether books and written stories have resulted in the loss of powerful memories that would have existed had we favoured oral story telling instead. This book fell flat on all accounts. The characters were half baked and never reached their full potential (a lazy author perhaps?). The story started to revolved around a contrived romance between the American and the African and all the depth went flying out the window. The most interesting characters were tangential and ended up only sneaking their heads into the story to make way for said contrived romance. The ending felt as though someone told the author that she needs to end with a bang so she decided that a 'bang' meant flatten out all the life from the story.

Flat. That's the one word I would use to describe this book. Disappointing, unfulfilling, contrived, and amateurish, are a few other words.

Also, can someone please tell me what was the deal with all the mosquito references? These were scattered throughout the book, at the beginning of every chapter... but it didn't tie in to the story (even if I stretched my metaphorical and figurative muscles to their max). FYI... I'm from Africa and mosquitoes are not the defining characteristic of this continent.