~ Stay with Me, by Ayobami Adebayo ~
Like most good novels, Stay with Me is both specific — set in Nigeria, in the 1990s, among both traditional and modern people — and universal — a deep look into the marital relationship between two people.
Yejide was a bright, opinionated, independent college girl in Ife, Nigeria, when she met Akin. Their romance proceeded against the backdrop of political unrest, until a day of riots and shooting when they agree to marry. Akin thinks in flashback:
I wanted to bind myself to her, so she could be safe, so I could go with her everywhere she went.
They are happy, but no children appear. Medical tests show no problems. The questions from the community become sharper until the family decides Akin should take a second wife, Funmi. Yet, there are still no children. The family blames Yejide:
“Why won’t you allow my son to have a child?” She slapped the tray of groundnuts on the floor and stood up.
“I don’t manufacture children. God does.”
“Women manufacture children, and if you can’t you are just a man. Nobody should call you a woman.”
Desperate, Yejide resorts to faith healers, climbing a mountain to consult with the Prophet Josiah (“Mrs Adeolu had assured me that he was a miracle worker.”). She believes she is pregnant, has morning sickness, a stomach bulge, much to Akin’s disbelief. The fake pregnancy proceeds for over a year, providing plenty of gossip fodder for the community.
And then Yejide really does get pregnant, thanks to a brief affair with her husband’s brother when she is desolate and alone. This pregnancy is smooth, and their lovely daughter Olamide is born. The family throw a huge, traditional party. But further tragedy lies in Yejide’s life: her children have sickle cell anemia.
Family life plays out against the background of upheaval in the country.
Though he had only just started walking, Sesan was firm on his feet and insisted on descending the stairs without my assistance. It was while I trailed him down the stairs that I heard the coup broadcast on the radio we now left on at all hours.
It is Adebayo’s framing of Yejide’s personality that keeps the reader fascinated through the almost relentlessly sad events in the couple’s life. Yejide is strong, courageous, and sarcastically opinionated.
I wanted to leave them standing outside and go back upstairs to sleep. Maybe they would melt into puddles of brown mud if they stayed long enough in the sun. Iya Martha’s buttocks were so big that if melted, they would have taken up all the space on the concrete steps that led up to our doorway.
And yet she is also not immune to the pressures of society, and stunned at the turn her life is taking.
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. […] 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 novel is written mostly from Yejide’s point of view, and her voice is what draws the reader. Yejide grows, diminishes, changes, gets knocked off balance, finds herself again in response to events. The rawness, honesty, and wit in her thoughts are captivating. An occasional chapter is written in Akin’s voice, but these Akin chapters are rather startling; the voice is not different enough to immediately identify the speaker, and it is confusingly easy to forget who is speaking. Once the reader realizes it is Akin, they are likely to want to get back to Yejide, who is the more powerful and interesting character.
This is a novel about love, but it is more realistic than romantic. Does love survive betrayal? Or illness, pain and suffering?
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.
This astonishingly assured debut novel makes one eagerly anticipate Adebayo’s next work.
Stay with Me, by Ayobami Adebayo. Knopf, 2017
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