The Lure of the Honey Bird by Elizabeth Laird

In turns an account of the cultural heritage of Ethiopia and of its subsequent dissolution and forefeiture by the increasing modernity of the country, The Lure of the Honey Bird is an inherently flawed and increasingly paradoxical piece that never appears to fully comprehend the moral and human weight of its own subject matter.

Using the city of Addis Ababa as a point of purchase, Laird travels back and forth into nearby rural townships in order to obtain an ethnographic record of the oral history of Ethiopia and its people. In doing so she attempts to combine the media of travelogue and short story writing, without ever fully realising either.

As a travelogue, the translation of the landscape into a palpable, oppressive atmosphere is not present, with the descriptions of the peoples and the surroundings too fleeting to fully take in, even though Laird states early on “…I was to learn that an atmosphere was a necessary prerequisite to a successful session.”

There is no magnanimity in the stories recounted, which tout the values of retribution with an Old Testament vigor over the morality of redemption. These tales are too often recounted whimsically, portraying a justification of an ‘eye for an eye’ morality in a patronising, imperialist light. [Eric Boyd]