Stay With Me is deeply felt and deserves all of the praise it received before being published in the U.S. It's a study of grief, hope, and human breaking points that is told from both perspectives of an imperfect, yet wholly sympathetic, married couple. I look forward to recommending this as one of my favorite books this year and a brilliant new author.

Wow. Such great character building and storytelling in this. I nearly read the entire book in one sitting because I found myself so engaged in the characters from the very beginning. Adebayo is an author to watch out for.

Women manufacture children and if you can’t you are just a man, Nobody should call you a woman. She gripped my wrists and lowered her voice to a whisper. “This life is not difficult, Yejide. If you cannot have children, allow my son to have some with Funmi. See, we are not asking you to stand up from you place in his life, we are just saying you should shift so that someone else can sit down.”

In her breathtaking debut Stay With Me, Ayobami Adebayo tells the story of Yejide and Akin and the Nigerian culture they inhabit; a culture that sees childlessness as failure and casts love and loyalty aside for the sake of bearing children. But like The Gift of The Magi, Yejide and Akin attempt to give to one another what they desire while losing an important part of themselves in the process. This starts with Akin’s reluctant agreement with his mother to take a second wife; a choice wholly unknown to Yejide- one that goes against everything they agreed upon when they first married.

I had expected them to talk about my childlessness. I was armed with millions of smiles. Apologetic smiles, pity-me-smiles, I-look-unto-God-smiles–name all the fake smiles needed to get through an afternoon with a group of people who claim to want the best for you while poking at your open sore with a stick– and I had them ready. I was ready to listen to them tell me I must do something about my situation. I expected to hear about a new pastor I could visit; a new mountain where I could go to pray; or an old herbalist in a remote village or town whom I could consult. I was armed with smiles for my lips, an appropriate sheen of tears for my eyes and sniffles for my nose. I was prepared to lock up my hairdressing salon throughout the coming week and go in search of a miracle with my mother-in-law in tow. What I was not expecting was another smiling woman in the room, a yellow woman with a blood-red mouth who grinned like a new bride.

The pressure to have a son turns Akin away from Yejide, from her wishes. At the same time, Yejide, who comes from a family of many but has felt no love as the outcast child, dreams of a large family, of someone of her creation who she can pour her love into.

Yejide is fierce, and while she cannot affect Akin’s choice, she is unwavering in her decision to fight against it with what little power she possess. She vows to do what ever she can to give Akin the one thing he so desperately wants, the one thing they both so desperately deserve.

I went through several possibilities, from beating her to a pulp the next time she showed up in the salon to asking her to move in with us so I could keep her close enough to have my eye on her at all times. It did not take long to realize the ultimate solution had little to do with her. I simply had to get pregnant, as soon as possible, and before Funmi did. It was the only way I could be sure I would stay in Akin’s life.

Having already consulted the best medical doctors in Nigeria and beyond to only receive the reassurance that both husband and wife are medically sound, Yejide turns to the ancient methods hoping to conceive, to please her husband and to rescue their marriage. But her determination turns feral and she sets down an unstable path.

Meanwhile, Akin develops a plan of his own. His love for Yejide keeps him from giving himself fully to his second wife and his pride leads him down an alternative route to satisfy their need for a child. In an exquisite test of loyalty and trust, Akin turns to his family for help.

I loved Yejide from the very first moment. No doubt about that. But there are things even love can’t do. Before I got married, I believed love could do anything. I learned soon enough that it couldn’t bear the weight of four years without children. If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But even when it’s in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn’t mean it’s no longer love.

Secret betrayal eventually leads to children for Yejide and Akin, but the trauma of their conception is nothing compared to the many tragedies that lay before them. When the secrets they both kept are revealed, their marriage undergoes its most difficult trial yet.

Adebayo writes with a grace and sensitivity fitting to this redemptive story. An intimate portrait of trust, Stay With Me constructs a marriage built on a loving foundation and illuminates its many cracks borne of the demanding weight of culture and expectation.

I convinced myself that my silence mean I was a good wife. But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves. I bit my tongue because I did not want to ask questions. I did not ask questions because I did not want to know the answers. It was convenient to believe my husband was trustworthy; sometimes faith is easier that doubt.

Adabayo is a mistress of literary hooks: her opening lines of chapters and how she filters in the various twists and turns of the plot ensured that I found it difficult to stop reading and put the book down. She delicately leaves in her narrative way hints and clues that ultimately pulls the sequences together like a thread. However, I also found the narrative as hanging rather loosely in places and the language and technique pitted with bumps/holes. Adaboyo wrote this novel in alternating chapters of two first person voices which I found unconvincing (the first two parts are predominantly Yejibe’s point of view and the third part is predominantly Akin’s side of things). Akin and Yejide are not particularly rounded characters and in spite of their deeply tragic personal circumstances they didn’t always manage to inspire much empathy in me. I don’t want to give away the way the novel meanders and develops because this is the axle upon which this novel really works well, but I found the portrait of Yejide as a working mother extremely unbelievable. Both Yejide and Akin are successful business people and yet they do not seem particularly invested in their jobs; there is no indication of struggle and Yejide opens and closes down hairdressing salons wherever she wishes and with instant success. I found the scene where she goes up the mountain and breastfeeds a goat more realistic than their day-to-day routine (which makes up the main fabric of marriage). I also found it extremely difficult to disentangle their voices, if it were not for the content of what was being said. Adabayo does try to distinguish them; Akin speaks in shorter staccato pace and abbreviates sentences by removing pronouns but the tone and voice still remain similar. This may also be due to the fact that the main narrative force/pace of the novel lies in dialogue. The characters regularly seem to lack emotions (and come across rather two dimensionally and infantile) although I was deeply touched by the scene when Akin cuts Yejide’s hair; a gesture which embraces the nature of their grief and briefly unites them. As mentioned, this is a novel that hinges on dialogue and I enjoyed the colour and cultural setting that this conveyed (scattered with Yoruba). There are also two Yoruba folk/fairy tales (one told to their children by Akin, the other by Yejibe which link into their own story and struggle. They both also choose to interfere with the story/ending which is especially symbolic of Akin’s own attempt to change the direction of the destiny of his marriages). Adabayo also grounds the novel in a specific time in Nigeria; peppering the novel with political and social history; the robbers, references to the military coup under Colonel Tola Zidon and the political unrest resulting from the annulment of the Nigerian Presidential elections in 1993 which causes the ultimate misunderstanding which drives Yejibe to a drastic final decision. The fast paced narrative, dialogue and setting make for a vivid cinematographic effect. I can see this novel being made into a very gripping and intense film!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday for the ARC of this book!

I truly enjoyed so much about this book! I loved the story and the glimpse into a culture I know little about. I truly could not figure out how it would end, but it was perfect! I like how the author switched time periods and points of view, yet treated her readers like mature individuals avoiding chapter titles stating who was talking and when and just let us discover it in her writing. I just can't think of anything I didn't like about this book.
Author - 1⭐️
Story - 1⭐️
Ending - 1⭐️
Offensiveness - 1⭐️
Recommend - 1⭐️

I'm never quite sure what has me rate a book 5 stars. I rarely do so. I think I save my 5 stars for books that have me fully intellectually and emotionally engaged. Stay With Me was that kind of reading experience. Set in Nigeria between the mid 1980s and 2008, Stay With Me is about the tortuous relationship between Yejide and Akin, and their heartbreaking road to parenthood. I don't want to say too much about the story because it's best to experience its emotional punch as it unfolds but here are some of the things I loved about Stay With Me:

-I loved the portrayal of Yejide. No one will agree with all of her decisions but Adebayo has created a character that felt so real. The consequences of losing her mother at birth are perfectly woven into this angry, aching and intelligent character.
-There is a lot of love in this book, but it is love between humans. So it comes at a price including bad decisions made out of love, silence where speaking is needed and avoidance because of the fear of loss.
-I loved the portrayal of contemporary Nigeria. As someone who knows relatively little about Nigeria, this book gave me a strong sense of the interplay of traditional culture, modernity and political unrest. Yejide and Akin are university educated and relatively well to do. Yejide runs her own hair salon and Akin works for a bank. Yet they both come from traditional polygamous families, and there is much pressure on Akin to take on a second wife -- something Akin vehemently opposes.
-Although Stay With Me is relatively short, a lot happens in this story and much of it is unexpected. This is not a story with a typical narrative arc but it is carefully and beautifully constructed.
-Adebayo treads intelligently on morally charged territory.
-And the ending -- yikes -- had me weepy.

I loved it. I highly recommend it. Although I suspect that many will struggle with many of Yejide and Akin's choices and actions. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

Formatted review available at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1921631824?book_show_action=false

After four years of marriage, Yejide and Akin still haven’t had a child. Akin’s family pressures him to take on a second wife who can provide him with descendants. Polygamy was never part of their plan, so Yejide is livid when a second wife appears at her doorstep. She becomes desperate to get pregnant in order to protect her marriage. Stay with Me is an emotional story about the slow disintegration of a relationship and the damage that societal expectations can inflict.

This is such an emotional read! It made my stomach feel tied up in knots. My heart hurt so much for these characters because of the burdens they were forced to face. Part of me is so thrilled to find a talented new author to follow, but the other part of me is angry that she put her characters through so much pain! When we first meet Yejide, it's 2008 and she's still married to Akin. However, it seems that they've not communicated over the last fifteen years. She has just received an invitation to be Akin's guest at his father's funeral. The chapters alternate between Akin and Yejide as they reveal the story of their relationship, from love at first sight to the challenges that followed. The story of their relationship coincides with the tumultuous presidency of Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993). Through the many twists and turns in this story, Yejide and Akin suffer a never-ending series of setbacks. Sometimes it felt like too much, but I think that feeling is intensified by the way the reveals are distributed. Each tragedy results from the one before it, but the answers aren't revealed linearly.

Yejide has always been alone in the world. Her mother died during her birth and her father likes to remind her of her part in her mother's death. Her father's other wives ostracize her. Yejide's mother is described as a woman without lineage, which makes them question Yejide's humanity: "when there was no identifiable lineage for a child, that child could be descended from anything—even dogs, witches or strange tribes with bad blood." When she falls in love with Akin, she finally has a person that is hers and an opportunity to create a family for herself. She finally matters to someone! Everything falls apart when Akin agrees to take on a second wife and she gets crowded out of her own life. Now she must have a child. It will secure her place in the marriage and give her something that is really hers: "A man can have many wives or concubines; a child can have only one mother."

Akin and Yejide cling to each other against all reason because they don’t want to be alone. There are issues in their relationship from the beginning. Akin is constantly making compromises without consulting his wife. Yejide tries her best to be a compliant wife, despite the endless amount of heartache thrown her way. The gulfs between them are further widened because of societal expectations and the desperation to meet those ideals. Shame is a powerful emotion. The shame of not being "woman enough" or "man enough" can drive people to great lengths to hide their supposed deficiencies. Yejide has little support. As a woman, she must endure the community's blame for anything that's lacking in her marriage. She also receives indifferent reactions to her very valid emotions, which cause her lose grip on reality and retreat further within herself.

The drama occurs on both a personal and political scale. During the same time period as Yejide and Akin's marital strife, Nigeria is undergoing major turmoil. After the 1985 coup, there’s a series of escalating conflicts where nothing really changes except a slow weakening of the country's stability. The political battles and the characters' reactions to the events mirror what’s going on in the marriage. Yejide describes family members knocking at her door as soldiers prepared for war because she knows they are going to inflict damage on her marriage. The introduction of the second wife occurs around the same time as Babangida's successful coup. As Babangida assumes power, Yejide reflects that "Nigeria was still in the honeymoon phase of her relationship with Babangida, and like most new brides she wasn’t asking probing questions, yet.” The violence escalates, but no one is able to see how bad it’s gotten because they are too close to the situation. Even with deteriorating conditions, Yejide hopes that Babangida will maintain power "because the status quo was the devil we knew." When someone questions the government's commitment to change, Akin dismisses the idea that they would invest so many resources on something only to abandon their plans.

Akin thought that as long as he and Yejide had a child they would find true happiness, no matter what had to be sacrificed to achieve that goal. But how many lies and secrets can a marriage endure? Lies pile on top of even more lies until it becomes too much for anyone to bear. Yejide marvels at how one doesn't need to be lied to by another person in order to be deceived, because "the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves." It's easy to blind ourselves to reality and fool ourselves into seeing what we want to see. As Yejide says, "sometimes faith is easier than doubt." Love is complicated. Sometimes problems are too big to overcome and love just isn't enough. Did Akin and Yejide ever have a chance at happiness or were they doomed from the beginning? Did succumbing to their families’ coercion merely expose the cracks that were already there? Did the constant pressure to measure up to society's ideals make honesty and open communication not seem like a valid option and prevent this couple from paving their own way? I thought this story was going to focus on the dynamics of a polygamous marriage, but it was so much more than that.Stay with Me is an amazing debut from a talented new author!

"Nobody here knows I'm still married to you. I only tell them a slice of the story: I was barren and my husband took another wife. No one has ever probed further, so I've never told them about my children." This book absolutely gutted me… my heart completely broke for Yejide. This is a heavy read and I will say that if the subject matter of losing a child is a trigger for you, please know that this topic is heavily addressed throughout this book. The author is raw and honest regarding Yejide’s struggle with her grief and how she copes (or fails to cope) with reconciling that grief while living with the constraints her society has placed upon her. It has been quite a while since I have had such a visceral reaction to a character, but Moomi provoked an anger in me that I have not felt while reading in quite some time. The whole incident with Moomi and Sesan was horrifying to me, but also provided eye-opening insight in to the superstitions, folk lore, and rituals of the Nigerian culture. This book covers such a vast array of topics from polygamy and fertility to political unrest and it is all woven together so beautifully and packs such a powerfully intense punch. Ayobami Adebayo does an extraordinary job of telling a tale of a husband and a wife, of love and betrayal, of hopes and shattered dreams. She masterfully explores what it is to be a woman in a society where the main expectation of her is to bear her husband many sons and the mental anguish that can come to pass when that is not possible. I loved Yejide’s character for her strength, her complexity and her fragility. As the book neared the end, I just wanted redemption and peace for her. My only issue with the book (and it is a small one) was that it was sometimes difficult to know who was speaking at the beginning of some of the chapters. Stay With Me is a compelling, powerful debut and I can not wait to see what Ayobami Adebayo writes next. 4.5 stars.

Well written debut that largely deserves the hype it has received. Infertility wreaks havoc whenever it occurs but this is the first time we've seen the impact in Nigeria. I appreciated this novel more than I enjoyed it, in part because there was a lot of misery here. I liked the details of Nigerian life and rooted for Yejide and Akin up to a certain point. There are some twists (no spoilers). This is short and the language spare which I thought didn't allow the characters to show as much of themselves as I would have liked. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I look forward to more from Adebayo.

I found this book about a marriage in Nigeria fascinating and meaningful, although it wasn't quite what I expected.

The story begins with a married couple who now live apart.  Yejide is going to see her husband after many years for his father’s funeral. Then the story takes us back to the early years of their marriage.  Yejide is devastated because she hasn’t gotten pregnant, even though the doctors can’t find anything wrong.  Her husband Akin is pressured by family to bring in a second wife, a common practice in Nigeria, although he clearly isn’t comfortable doing it and Yejide is furious.

This is a difficult book to review, although I quite enjoyed it.  The main character is not entirely likable at first – she’s jealous and obsessed with having a baby, and will do almost anything to get one, including dealing with disreputable faith healers.  I sympathized in some ways but not as much as you might expect.  She’s very upset about the second wife and feels betrayed by the husband she loves, but she also lives within a culture that’s comfortable with it.  Indeed, it seemed to be expected by all of Akin's relatives, so it was difficult for me to understand why she was so upset (setting aside my own cultural perspective).

Adébáyò, who was born in Nigeria, is a skillful writer and draws you into the story.  As the book goes on, Yejide becomes more sympathetic.  The author explains that Yejide grew up in a family with many wives, and she’s experienced the ugliness that occurs among these wives who are competing with each other for their husband’s attention. As the book progresses, the  reader grows to understand her husband better as well, and these changes in perspective were challenging to read but critical to the story.  As Yejide and Akin face the challenges in their marriage, you see how they each views those challenges differently, and how those differences impact their relationship.  So even though this book is set in a different culture than mine, it’s essentially the story of a marriage, of a husband and wife who love each other but are in some ways strangers. Neither character is entirely wrong or right.  By the end of the book I found myself considering which spouse has hurt the other more (or at the same time, which one loves the other more).

This book was nominated for the Bailey’s Prize shortlist and is Adébáyò's first novel.

I read this book for the Reading All Around the World challenge, the Diverse Reads challenge, and 20 Books of Summer.  I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and publisher Knopf Doubleday.

What an outstanding book. I loved this book!!!! This book depicts what we will do for the things we want and what can happen once we get it. This is a love story between Yejide and her husband Akin. We walk with them as they meet in university and continue the journey to marriage, children, loss and family. This book captured me from page one and would not let go. The writing was eloquent and I really enjoyed the references to the African culture. We travel with Yejide as she embarks on full-filling her wish to give her husband a child. How far will she go to do this? How will family interject themselves in this quest? How far will a mother go to save her child from hurt or pain? This book answers all those questions and does so magnificently. Oustsanding novel and I do look forward to reading more from this talented author. To NetGalley, I thank you for allowing me to read the ARC of this exceptional book as well as thanks to the the author and the publisher in return for my honest review.

Although Stay with Me was very readable, I had a hard time connecting and empathizing with the characters. Almost all of the characters prove to be deceptive and gets angry with each other for being deceived in return. Lots of tragedy and loss, but I didn't feel any strong emotion for the characters while reading. What I ended up feeling, were strong emotions against the characters; which may have just been the point.

When Yejide and Akin are introduced, we see a marriage under pressure. Akin, being the oldest son, is expected to produce children to carry on the family name and bring honor to their families. Yejide seems confident in their relationship and their ability to weather their hardships as long as they continue to present a lovingly united front against their meddling family. However, as the story unfolds the cracks in their relationship are seen, and some of those cracks turn into craters that may be too large to fill in.

I started out feeling sorry for Yejide. She had a rough childhood because of the loss of her mother in a family with multiple women who were all looking out only for themselves and their set of children. I hate it when adults choose to abuse children for no other reason than for existing. These women who should have taken Yejide in and made her feel a mother's love and protection, were nothing but petty and self serving. With the exception of one woman who came into Yejide's life much later, every woman in her life was unlikable. Unfortunately, Yejide ended up being culpable in some of her own unhappiness.

The unlikable characters in Stay With Me aren't limited to the women. The men in this one are self serving, and in my opinion, unmanly. A man who truly loves his wife, and even his selfish extended family, would not allow himself to be manipulated and bullied into actions that anyone would know will lead to nothing but heartbreak and disappointment. Akin is shallow and weak, and the reader gets to see that almost immediately. All of the lies, schemes, and lack of decent moral character throughout this story became more annoying as innocent lives were affected.

Even though I was unable to like anyone in Stay with Me, it is a well written debut story. I am glad that I read it, but it is not one that I would read again. However, I would readily read another book written by Ayobami Adebayo.

This was such a heartbreaking story in so many ways. From arranged marriages, deceit, attempting to achieve the impossible demands and always being overruled, Yejide is hoping and trying to conceive a child. A major necessity of a wife in her native Nigeria.

I felt so sorry for this poor woman. First with the demands, then the arrival of a "new" wife and her in-laws were incorrigible! And the husband? I will leave interested persons to discover that feeling as I don't want to insert a spoiler here.

I thoroughly enjoyed my journey with Yejide. She was a great character and she grew on me very quickly. I really liked this story a lot.

Huge thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

<p>I hate writing reviews for books that I didn't like (especially since it seems whenever I write anything less than complimentary, the authors contact me and try to convince me that I'm wrong), so I'll say, for <A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/19287784/book/141660130">Stay With Me</a>, that the book works better in theory than in practice. In theory: when a wife fails to fall pregnant, her inlaws convince her husband to take a second wife. In practice: facile characters who behave with no more depth than a child's puppets made from construction paper and popsicle sticks. As an example: the second wife. It wouldn't have been out of place for her to cackle maniacally. There's no examination of what she is getting out of the arrangement. She exists solely as a foil for the main character to rage against. </p>

<p>I was excited to read this book. Sadly, it's one of those books where melodrama replaces character depth. Books like this make me feel manipulated: of course I'm going to feel badly for people in sorry situations (infertility under a dictatorship), but when there's no further complexity to the characters other than their sorry situations, when the characters are defined solely by their sorry situation, I'm going to get frustrated. And I got frustrated. </p>

<p>Boo.</p>

<p>(Hopefully too Ms Adebayo isn't going to write me something to tell me I'm a jerk for not liking her novel. Fingers crossed.)</p>

<p><A href="https://www.librarything.com/work/19287784/book/141660130">Stay With Me</a> by Ayobami Adebayo went on sale August 22, 2017.</p>

<p><small>I received a copy free from <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/">Netgalley</a> in exchange for an honest review.</small></p>

Riveting read about a couple whose marriage falls apart following a life of deception, insecurity, loss, betrayal, and so much more. I started reading and could not stop - it was just so emotional and touching to read about this man and woman who were meant to be together, but who found the ways to stay apart. #gutwrenching

So the year is far enough along that I can confidently predict that this will be one of my favorite books of the year -- top 10 if not top 5 of the 150+ I am likely to read. The characters and the story will stay with me (see what I did there) for a very long time. I was enjoying the gorgeous writing so much that I didn't really see the plot twists coming, and it's rare that I lose myself in a book like that. So much is packed into this book, but it's presented in such a relatively understated way, that I sometimes just had to stop and digest what just happened. (I usually read books in one sitting if I possibly can, so stopping just to take it all in is not usual for me.) This is a book I would highly recommend to everyone, but especially if you're trying to learn more about cultural traditions with which you're unfamiliar. This book was an eye-opener for me, and while I wouldn't call it "enjoyable" necessarily, due to the intensity of the subject matter, I'm very glad I read it, especially after some recent disappointments.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book is tough to review and indeed, was tough to read due to its subject matter. However, the writing is definitely compelling and I had trouble putting it down. But it was more in the sense of not being able to look away from a car crash or train wreck. I struggled to connect with any of these characters--I found most, if not all of them, beyond redemption. While the plot is wrapped up satisfyingly, I'm still trying to figure out if the payoff was worth the emotional turmoil it required to get there.

Stay With Me is a powerful novel about family and sacrifice. Led by strong characters I won't soon forget, I was completely caught up in the story from the beginning. This novel had many layers, and as each one unfolded I was more intrigued. I just have one word for Yejide and Akin: communication!

I had no expectations about this novel going in … I didn’t know what it was about or what to expect. But, I’m so glad that I read this one. It’s the fascinating story of Yejide and Akin who live in Nigeria. It’s about their marriage, their families and how things can unfold in unusual ways. I don’t know a ton about Nigeria so it was so interesting to learn more about the country as well as the culture itself. The customs and traditions that played out in this book were really interesting. This is literary fiction of the best kind – it explores so much ground such as parenting, secrets, grief, betrayal, anger, love, obligation … and more.

Seeing the intimate life of these people in the context of their cultural and familial expectations was simple beautiful. It’s not an easy story – it explores a lot of pain and suffering. Yet, the book didn’t feel dark to me. It felt very meaningful and heartfelt. Very intense yet extremely readable. At times, I was shocked that this is a debut novel. I cannot wait to see what Ayobami Adebayo has in store for us next! Highly recommend this one!

"Perhaps when we ask the lord to deliver us from evil, we are really asking him to deliver us from ourselves."

It isn't easy to accept the effect others especially the one's we love have on us, and it's as difficult to acknowledge or understand the effect we have on them in turn. Stay With Me, would at a distant glance seem a love story but it's not, it is a story about love, grief, motherhood, and self-acceptance.

The female protagonist in the story, Yejide, voices her opinion against polygamy, and understands her fragile position in society, and in her husband's life after becoming 'the first wife', the mother to the second wife, or a sister. She is headstrong, full of warmth, but this incident triggers her, making her full of anguish and angry at the betrayal. Yejide, 'in moments that do not submit to her routine', is vulnerable, but she pushes through. Ayobami Adebayo, explores polygamy as a set tradition because of which women have suffered. We see that women are constantly competing against each other, friends only in maternity. Not only does Akin's (the male protagonist) mother not like the fact that her husband married again after her, Yejide strongly contends against it because her own mother was a second wife, and even after her, there were others for her father. But, I absolutely found strength in scenes when the women get together to protect their children, especially girls from being raped by robbers.

'Mother is gold, Mother is treasured gold that cannot be bought with money,' reverberates throughout the novel, with Yejide trying her best to get pregnant hopelessly, and then sustaining her pregnancy and motherhood, while remembering her motherless childhood. The idea of becoming a mother and having a child all your own, wherein the husband, would no longer be the only person you have is tragic, yet real. She convinces her own self to try alternative methods to get pregnant, the alternative ways that lead us to a mountain, to a superior power, someone we think might absolve all our problems, but more often than not, those powers are humans playing tricks at us.

The same old idea, that even Atwood explores in her dystopic fiction, which sometimes feels far real, the idea that a woman who does not bear children is not a woman, but a man. Woman manufacture children, and if you don't then you are not one.

An experience of becoming a mother (if you want to be one) can be divine, it is said. Sometimes our body and our mind confuse us into believing that we can have a different reality, a reality far more beautiful and soothing than what we are living. We normalize things we wouldn't dare do otherwise. Normal is a word we throw around to fit in, normal is what we do to seem to belong.

Adebayo hasn't minced words when it comes to a man's aggression. She convincingly has set the story in the time of unrest in Nigeria, a coup that destabilizes the government, a Nigeria where suddenly ransom robberies are slowly becoming a norm, and where raping women and children would be 'normal'.

She introduces us to Nigerian language, words that seem so unfamiliar and yet warm in their utterance. As if you'd almost know their meaning. The folk tales of Nigeria, the political and cultural set-up we are in, makes you enter a different environment but again a very familiar one, where woman is as much a secondary citizen as in any part of the world. The Nigerian children's folk-tales, in the book that we read, are so surreal, warm and in turn speak volumes about the characters and the plot.

What is powerful about this book is not just the intriguing and gripping plot, but the space given to the male protagonist Akin, his problems and his perspective. Adebayo is truly feminist in her rendering of this story, by interspersing chapters with his voice, with those of Yejide. Though my heart was with Yejide, I could still find space to understand what the patriarchal conditioning and norms had done to even a good man like Akin, a character who had enough empathy in him to cry at the unfairness of Yejide's childhood and life. Yet, fails in the simple act of self-acceptance, and acknowledgement or apologia of the unfairness meted out by him.

Moving, realist and hopeful. This is a story that would stay with you.