Sunday, 4 March 2018

A CONCISE REVIEW OF DR. VICTORIA LEO GAMBO’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY: CHEATING DEATH WRITTEN AND PRESENTED BY AMOS D. BIVAN, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, KADUNA STATE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION GIDAN-WAYA ON THIS AUSPICIOUS DAY, 2ND DECEMBER, 2017



It is axiomatic to intone that a book is not judge by its cover but by its contents. Permit me to say that the aforementioned expression says it all about Dr. Gambo’s autobiography Cheating Death, which takes her readership into a journey of introspection with an artistically narrative skill running through the various chapters of her debut from "The Dawn" through “The Terminal Cycle" of her experiences on this tumultuous lane called life. Part one of the book presents the prologue; while Part two showcases: The dawn of the living legend, the quintessential Victoria Leo Gambo, PhD. Life in the village, At the nick of time; Drowning: the River Wonderful experience, Appendisectomy, Thyroidectomy, Pneumonia, Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!! Part three unveils: The eight types of accidents as encapsulated thus: (1) The initial cycle, (2) The unwritten obituary (3) Accident within accident (4) Mother of all accidents, (5) Accidental accident, (6) After the crucified Christ (7) The recurrent accident, (8) The terminal cycle, and lastly, part four is the summation of this narrative.
Cheating Death, sequel to none is Gambo's brain child weaved out of the series of vicissitudes of her life, a 126 page book of the school of life. Segmented into four parts, chronicles eight accidental mishaps and victories. The aforementioned, loan credibility to Shakespeare's supposition that: "When misfortunes come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions." In the case of the quintessential Swadkasa, they did not come trickling or in battalions, but in quick successions and bouts.
The writer in Cheating Death has deployed a third person narrative point of view in her desire to convey her harrowing experiences to her readers. At a point she started her story as a narrator, by using her voice, and then at some other point introduces a narrator who tells the story - in which there are other characters who, in turn, add their own voices to the autobiography as contained in part three, of the book from page 79. It is appropriate to subscribe that:
Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been-Jose Orteha Y. Easset (1883-1955).
The book through the use of flash  back technique went down memory lane to show us how Swadkasa’s life is more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what person she ought to have been by graciously cheating on death through divine manipulations. Her humbling incidents are captured in lucid, simple and yet flambouyant words; sometimes expressed with some form of literary craftsmanship and dexterity by injecting some poetic-prose expressions to colour the autobiography. An average reader may find certain word and expressions very difficult to comprehend, the book is coloured with mostly theological, medical and literary registers interwoven into the overall fabric of the story. Its cover is beautifully designed to depict the unwritten obituary of a fallible being that cheated on death by divine orchestration, This literary piece is enlivened with a major of humour and equally solemn moments, which plays on the readers' emotions through the use of vivid imageries and appeals to their sensory impressions through the deployment of the "tactile," "olfactory," "gustatory," and "kinaesthetic" imageries, Sometimes you laugh and at times you almost weep out your heart and at some other moments you feel like stepping into the story to revert some ugly unpleasant incidents ... due to the emotion aroused in your mind.
Cheating Death is not only an avenue for a celebration of life and God's faithfulness by Dr Gambo, who had almost kissed death severally and yet, turned her back too readily on death and it messengers. But the book is also a reminiscence of her life-time testimonies and experiences tattooed for us and generations yet unborn to appreciate and appropriate the awesomeness and richness of God's mercies towards mortal beings like ourselves, The indefatigable woman, with the nine (9) lives of a cat, survived all the eight series of accidents just as cats survive mishaps that would otherwise be seriously damaging to other animals.
I crave leave at this juncture to say that this book is not only a must buy, but rather a must read, as saying this is just stating the obvious. Reading it then, will connect you to the fountain of God's mercies and graces for longevity and purposeful living on earth, where we shall one day re-echo John Donne's words that: "If ever any beauty I did see which I desired", t 'was but a dream thee." Swad, as she is seldom referred to, had also seen and attested in her third testimony "Dreams: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven" to the foregoing remark. May I end this review with these quotations:


Cowards die many times before
Their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death
but once.
Of all the wonders that I have
heard.

It seems to me most strange that
men should fear;
seeing that death, a necessary
end,
will come when it will come. -William Shakespeare
"A cat will be your friend but never your slave. " - Theophile Bautier. The indomitable Swad, is a friend to death, but not its slave!
I wish you an exciting and a fulfilled time as you savour this recipe Cheating Death and queue into the graces that abound in feasting on it.



bivanamos@gmail.com

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