Book review: Life and loss in 'Half Portraits Under Water'

Twin sisters Olioma and Yagazie, one a poet and another a dancer, yearned to bond by taking pictures together at the beach. Even though Olioma would write poems as she watched Yagazie swirl her body, her sister wanted them to engage in a pastime together at the beach. The two went. Only one came back home alive.

Olioma is steeped in grief as she comes to terms with the loss of her sister from drowning. This short story, ‘Half Portraits Under Water’, is also the title of Dennis Mugaa’s book.

Dennis Mugaa evokes sadness in the reader by delicately delving into overwhelming feelings of loss.    

‘Half Portraits Under Water’ is a short story selection published by Jahazi Press in 2024. The book is two-part, with the first section being historical fiction short stories titled ‘Echoes of History’ while the second part, ‘The Aftertaste of Loss’ talks about grief and loss in the modern day. The stories are interconnected.   

The arts are a strong element throughout the book. Dennis, an art enthusiast himself, explored the theme as seen in the artistic book title, among other art forms sprinkled across the pages like a story about a man in the street playing the trumpet. 

There is Michael in the first story who is a jazz enthusiast, and many characters doing some form of art or spending time in libraries, museums, art galleries, and beautiful streets to rediscover themselves.

“A lot of the characters practice some form of art. When you write about certain places in a particular time, you have to recognize the arts of that time,” Dennis explains.

What was the motivation behind the book?

“It was in 2018 when I chose writing as my career path. With that said, I didn’t have a particular intention really and I only realized that it was going to be a book when I had penned about eight stories. That was in 2022,” he says.

His writing tugs at the heart of a reader, written with a lot of care and meaning even in mundane events. Is his personal story reflected in the stories?  

“I believe that all the stories that authors write are inspired by something from their own lives and from our perspectives. There are those who do so in covert ways and those who are explicit in their sharing,” he says. 

He says African authors inspire him: “I have read every book by Chinua Achebe. The most recent novel I read was ‘The Most Secret Memory of Men’ by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr.”

He is saddened, however, that the bane of Kenyan publishing is people being drawn towards writing for the curriculum as opposed to taking risks and write fiction. 

What kind of research went into the writing of the book?

“For the first five stories, I read plenty of history books. I have also been to the places where the stories take place prior to authoring the book, either to study in the US, to visit like in Eastleigh, or for a writing residency in Nigeria,” he says. 

“Mogadishu is the only place I haven’t gone to, a setting for ‘The Only One I Have Not Lost’. I would examine photos of the city in the 1980s. It was a beautiful city, associated as a place for relaxation with breathtaking beaches and a centre for Swahili culture, not what Somalia is known like today,” says Dennis.