Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Year published: 2024
Category: Adult fiction
Pages: 416 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA, Nigeria, Netherlands
Summary: Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until—betrayed and brokenhearted—she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America—but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.
Review: This is another excellent book by Adichie! She weaves a story so well, capturing the people, sights, and sounds of her characters and locations. Link to my reviews: Americanah; We Should All Be Feministis; and One World: A Global Anthology.
Hearing the stories of these four women, I was pulled in immediately. They are smart, interesting, and living through things all women do. Through these characters, Adichi shows some interesting/ugly truths about America, and these were the parts that I found most interesting.
One of the women moves to the US to be with her Nigerian husband (who is jailed) and is assaulted as she works in a hotel. While her dealings with the police and hospital are both good and bad, it's the process that is jarring, the assumption that she is lying or responsible is heartbreaking, and her treatment by the press is frustrating.
A second woman comes to the US to do graduate work, and the descriptions of her conversations with her peers and colleagues ring true. She repeatedly says that America is provincial, that Americans feel their way is the only correct way to do things and to feel, even though they have not experienced other parts of the world. That is so true (and not in academia alone, but in all facets of life). I thought one interesting sentence was that liberals don't actually want to discuss the issues with conservatives, they just want to debate the semantics. As a liberal, that hurts, but I fear there is a strong piece of truth in it.
Adichie's insights into both Nigerian and US culture are so good, she is an amazing story teller, and I love the way she portrays women and the ways in which we move through the world.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Diversity--all the characters are Nigerian
- Literary Escapes--Nigeria
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