This book is a tough read but immensely worthwhile. Yejide is hoping for a child, and facing family pressure from her husband and mother-in-law. She feels she has tried everything. When her relatives insist upon a new wife, it is too much .

Set in turbulent 1980s 1980s Nigeria, Stay With Me is a heartbreaking story of a young, educated Nigerian couple, very much in love, whose marriage and lives are torn apart by a never-ending series of tragedies and acts of betrayal.

Childless in this setting is harrowing and women in Nigerian society of the time are portrayed as not much more than baby-producers and servants.

Despite all this , protagonist Yejide, is a successful business woman, trying to stay true to herself while also appeasing her husband, family and in-laws.

The novel is set against the political upheaval surrounding Babaginda's presidency, military coups and all the change sweeping through Nigeria.

Worth reading.

This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

Trigger warning: miscarriage and death of a child.

One thing that I have observed in my counselling work is that the grief associated with the death of a child is unfathomable, and that it changes families (for generations) in a way that is also unfathomable.

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a deeply tragic story, which examines the yearning and grief experienced by Yejide and her husband, Akin.

I was not strong enough to love when I could lose again, so I held her loosely, with little hope, sure that somehow she too would manage to slip from my grasp.

The backdrop is Nigeria in the eighties, when coups and elections create unrest in daily life. For Yejide and Akin, a modern and educated couple, the expectations of family and the cultural context of these expectations also contribute to their unrest.

Women manufacture children and if you can’t you are just a man. Nobody should call you a woman.

After four years of marriage with no baby, Akin’s family take matters into their own hands – Akin’s mother arrives at their house with another wife for her son (who Yejide discovers Akin has secretly married), and Yejide visits a medicine man for a ‘cure’ for her infertility. Akin is also desperate for a baby – not to appease his family, but because he knows Yejide wants one more than anything – and seeks ways of ‘solving’ the problem. Yejide and Akin’s desperation comes at a great cost.

I cried throughout the night as hard as I could. I held my head and tried to cry out the pain… For about six hours after I woke up, I thought my tears had washed my pain and guilt away. I did not know then that that was impossible.

I will not share anything more about the plot – there are plenty of twists and turns. The most interesting part of the story was the multi-faceted examination of grief. In particular, how grief is often obscured by other strong emotions – anger, shame, anxiety. There’s a saying that goes ‘I sat with my anger longer enough, until she told me her real name is grief.’ Akin comes to realise this by the end of story, acknowledging that his rage had been a defence against shame – “Anger is easier than shame” – and that his shame capped his grief.

I also enjoyed Adébáyọ̀̀’s examination of contemporary versus traditional values. Yejide and Akin viewed themselves as ‘modern’, and therefore polygamy was not something they saw as part of their future. Equally, Yejide sought traditional medicine when they had exhausted the advice of Western doctors. In times of stress, turning to the spiritual beliefs that you were brought up with, even if they have been largely absent from a person’s life for many years, is a common experience – in Stay With Me, it is poignant given the drivers, and enhanced by glimpses of Yejide’s own experience of growing up in a house with multiple wives.

3/5 Interesting and quite intense.

I received my copy of Stay With Me from the publisher, Canongate Books, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

"But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves. "
This book has been in my Kindle for a while and I can't imagine why it has taken me so long to get to it. I loved it and I'm so glad I didn't wait any longer.

Yejide and Akin meet at university, it is pretty much love at first sight. After their marriage Akin becomes a banker and Yejide opens a successful hair salon. Although their country allows polygamy, Akin has faithfully promised Yejide that she will be his only wife.
The narrative alternates from one to the other, giving us a complete picture of what each was thinking, or maybe assuming.
Meanwhile, in the background, is the political unrest of Nigeria in the 80s and 90s, always bubbling beneath the surface, and although we are aware of this, it is not the central theme of the book.

This is a book full of cultural interactions on a modern-day Nigerian couple. They are very much in love and hoping to have children, so why did it all go so heartbreakingly wrong? The author has paced her revelations perfectly, I was invested from the first page. As we gradually learn the back story, it becomes clear just how much damage meddling in-laws can do, especially in a country where they have so much influence. I was horrified that Yejide actually addressed her mother-in-law from a kneeling position.

This is the author's debut novel and very much deserved its place on the Bailey's Prize Longlist, alongside such big names as Rose Tremain and Margaret Atwood. I shall most definitely read whatever this author writes next, and this time it won't sit for ages in my Kindle.

This book is an interesting look at being the other woman in a relationship and deals with the sense of a guilt after a life-changing event.

Great ideas, poor execution.

Alas, there isn't much I can say that I liked about this book. I ended up giving it to the charity shop as soon as I finished it due to the fact that everything felt as though it needed more polishing. I appreciated the story, and I'm always an advocate for African fiction being shared with more readers, but this just missed the mark for me.

This was a beautifully told story of heart-wrenching love and loss in one Nigerian family.
Issues such as phantom pregnancies, affairs, child illness and close communities are covered, but ultimately this novel is about the lengths that we will go to, in order to pursue and protect our happiness.

A beautiful well written first novel. I absolutely loved the writing style and think this is such an important book that everyone should read! This is a story of a well educated working couple who cannot have children. The pressure mounts due to the traditional culture in which they live and drastic measures are taken. The way they navigate this is a wonderful read and I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

This is the best book I have read in a long time. I loved the voices of the characters, the heart wrenching story line, the narrative which was written so beautifully and allowed you to fly through the book. Beautiful story that would be an amazing film.

this is such a brilliant first novel; it's a close examination of gender roles, family, marriage and love. once you start reading, you won't put it down until you've read the very last page. oh, and did i say that the writing is gorgeous?

In an evocative and atmospheric portrait of contemporary Nigerian society, this compelling novel tells of a happily married couple, Yejide and her husband Akin, who are faced with childlessness in a society that sees a childless woman as a tragedy and insists that if she can’t conceive then it is not only justifiable but a man’s duty to take other wives to bear his children. Having children validates not just the individual and the marriage, but society as a whole. Beginning in the 1980s and going on to 2008 the couple’s own turmoil is reflected in the political events occurring in the country during those years but which take second place to their personal tragedies. Yejide’s desperate attempts to have a child are very moving and although life in a close-knit Nigerian family is perhaps very different to a European one, that basic desire to have a child is understood everywhere. I found the book an interesting read, and the glimpses it offers into a very different way of life really fascinating. Yejide’s plight is handled with compassion and understanding, but so is that of her beleaguered husband. And with the introduction of the problem of Sickle Cell Anaemia thrown into the mix, there’s a lot her to empathise with and engage the reader. A very good debut novel by a writer who shows much promise.

IMG_2211Nigerian fiction has carved out a permanent place on British bookshelves and for good reason. I’ve read a fair few Nigerian authors of the last 25 years and I’ve yet to encounter a bad book.

This one definitely didn’t break that streak even though I wasnt sure about the subject matter. It explores the marriage of Yejide. A woman who married for love and is desperate to have a child. Her mother-in-law is probably even more desperate. She has tried everything – medical treatments, arduous pilgrimages, dances with prophets, appeals to God. But nothing. Then her in-laws insist upon a new wife.

As much as I love a good character driven novel I was worried that this could become either unremittingly maudlin or too peppy for its own good. But set against the social and political turbulence of 80s Nigeria, and infused with honesty and humour Stay With Me is a tour de force. It deserves it’s place on the shortlist of The Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Personally I prefer it to the winner this year (The Power by Naomi Alderman).

Ayobami Adebayo’s book is full of the life that Yejide is so desperate for. As her marriage and sanity is threatened she finds friends in unexpected places. But there are other plots afoot that she has no idea about, unexpected gifts and unmeasurable threats.

5 Bites

Beautiful books are often painful. They are the kind of books that reach inside of you and touch that sore spot that makes you want to weep. These aren’t the kinds of books that lay it on thick, where the plot is dramatized just to make you cry. Rather, they are honest books, in which despite all good intentions things go wrong, where people get hurt and nothing could have prevented it. They are the kinds of books that celebrate human life in all its painful glory. Stay With Me was one of those books for me and it will stay with me for a long time. Thanks to Canongate Books and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It shouldn’t be hard to guess from my introduction that I loved this book. Part of why I started a book blog was in order to read more books from across the world because I fervently believe that reading a culture’s literature is one of the key ways of understanding it. There is always an initial hurdle to overcome when reading a book from outside your own culture, whether it is new and strange expressions, traditions and habits you don’t recognize, or settings and names that are foreign to you. However, these end up enriching your reading experience as the book truly allows you to settle into a different place. This was the case with Stay With Me. Adébáyò does not compromise herself for non-Nigerian readers. The book is filled with Nigerian phrases, folklore and traditions, as well as capturing the turbulent years around the military coup. Adébáyò describes her country both honestly and lovingly, and by the end of the book I was desperate to know more about Nigeria.

Parenthood, and especially, motherhood is central to Adébáyò’s Stay With Me. Ayide and Akin want children, desperately, both of their own accord as well as to meet external expectations of a large family. As grandmothers, neighbours and siblings make their wishes known, Ayide and Akin struggle for ways to cope with the pressure in their own ways. Adébáyò captures beautifully how deeply tied maternity is to femininity. To be a mother is to truly become a woman, according to many, and Ayide’s lack of children is taken as a sign of defectiveness. As she resorts to folklore for help, so Akin is pressured to find himself another wife. Without meaning to give anything away, I was very impressed with how Stay With Me showed the blame being placed on Ayide and the pressure being placed on Akin, while their own realities and truths tell them something else. In this quagmire of expectations and wishes, Ayide and Akin find themselves making choice after choice, each understandable and yet damning in its turn. Adébáyò tells their story with a gentleness that is almost painful, while never leaving anything out. By the end of the novel, the reader has been through the wringer with her characters and although they may have wished things had been different, the reader also knows why these things had to happen. Can you tell how carefully I am trying to phrase this so as not to ruin any of it for you?

Stay With Me is beautifully heartbreaking. With an honest tenderness, Adébáyò guides us through the lives of her characters and shows us how the wheel of fortune keeps on rolling. Sometimes you're on top, but before you know it you find yourself at the bottom again. Stay With Me is divided into chapters from Ayide and Akin's point of view, as well as moving back between the present and the past, in order to paint as complete a picture of their lives. By moving in time, Adébáyò is able to show us consequences before the actions, the pain before the happiness, and vice versa. It's hard to describe just how Adébáyò manages to describe her characters' emotions so honestly yet beautifully, to the point where there were moments where reading Stay With Me physically hurt. But in a good way. In the end, Stay With Me is achingly human, full of happiness, sadness, and you should definitely read it. Like now. Go.

I adored Stay With Me. It wasn't until the book was over that I truly realised just how much it had truly touched me. Now, days after reading it, Stay With Me is still on my mind and I can't wait to reread it. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone interested in Literary Fiction and African Literature.

Set in Nigeria the 80s, it is different to what I usually read but I found myself really enjoying it. Both storyline and characters were beautifully written.

4 stars

African narrative is for us is almost unknown, and above all unknown is the narrative of African female writers. A pity, because novels like this are absolutely powerful. The dramatic story of Yejide, daughter of modern Nigeria as for aspirations and education, but trapped in the tribal Nigeria because of the family, with its tradition of polygamy and offspring at all costs that triggers a series of increasingly dramatic events, is breathtaking and keeps the reader nailed to the pages. Only Yejide can stop the tragedy, but to do so she will have to break all forms of tradition and enter completely in modernity, leaving the beloved, but liar, husband, to grow, to find herself and, finally conscious of herself, make choices.
Magnificent.
Thank Canongate Books and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

For some reason this took me about 3 months to read, which doesn't really make sense since it's very readable and most people seem to have read it in one sitting- and I can totally see why they would. It wasn't really what I thought it would be, but it was very well done and there were a few things I just wasn't expecting. It can be quite dramatic and yet it never feels over the top.

Beautifully written and moving story about the lives of a young Nigerian couple who are very much in love and desperate for children but are heartbroken when, after four years, Yejide fails to conceive.

A complex novel intensely exploring the dynamics of marriage within a socio-cultural environment not often visited in novels available in the USA. I'd never really considered the devastating aspects of SCD but Adebayo renders them as accessible as she does a culture where bringing in a second wife because the first wife "failed" in her duty is considered a possibility. Adebayo works effortlessly with complex threads of contention to deliver an intense but very readable novel.

I loved this book to begin with. Yejide was a strong and fascinating character, and as you know from the first page that she is estranged from her husband I was hooked. By the end though, I struggled to understand the motivations behind a lot of her actions and wasn't convinced that she was ignorant enough to believe the lie her husband had told her which is billed as a big twist (no spoilers). It was a pretty devastating look at bereavement and fertility, and the pressures of Nigerian culture on women. Worth a read for the cultural insights and unusual story.

A really interesting read, though not as emotional as I had expected it to be.

Set in Nigeria, this story gave me a good first insight into daily life in that country - relationships, markets, housing, marriages, family etc. and all of this I thoroughly enjoyed.

However the underlying story about a man who arranges to get his wife pregnant by his brother was not as riveting or engaging as I was hoping for. Perhaps it was because the story was told from various points of view and didn't quite come together as one - I'm not sure.

Having said all this though it was a good read.