Book Review

In Yaa Gyasi’s new novel, Transcendent Kingdom , a Stanford Ph.D. candidate named Gifty studies reward-seeking behavior in mice and the mysterious synapses that can lead to addiction or depression. She does it because her brother, Nana, was a gifted basketball player before an injury led to an OxyContin addiction and eventually to a deadly heroin overdose. And she does it because her mother, a Ghanaian immigrant, is depressed and living in her bed. Gifty wants to better understand the science of suffering. Meanwhile, she grapples with the evangelical faith of her youth — and the salvation it once promised her. “‘What’s the point of all this?’ is a question that separates humans from other animals,” Gyasi writes. “Our curiosity around this issue has sparked everything from science to literature to philosophy to religion. When the answer to this question is ‘Because God deemed it so’ we might feel comforted. But what if the answer to this question is ‘I don’t know,’ or worse still,