Nigerian writing in English, both from within the country and from the diaspora, is certainly hitting its stride. This is the latest of several Nigerian-based novels to come my way.
The eponymous Glory has just returned to London from a life in America for her father’s funeral.
Familiar smells of camphor, palm oil and chili welcomed Glory, smells she had hated as a teenager, dousing herself in layers of cheap body spray to mask the scent of her house. But now Glory was grateful that everything had remained more or less the same. The same crucifix was nailed to the inside of the front door, guarding the entrance, the same cream textured wallpaper ran through the room, the same brown leather sofa and armchairs.
As the paragraph above shows, the the writing is not striking or distinctive, and is sometimes awkward.
Glory twisted her mouth around her face, trying to work out the most nonconfrontational way to pose her next question.
In this novel, it’s the characters and environment that hold the most promise.
Glory’s elder sister Faith is the family success: married to lawyer Michael, with two children, living in a fancy suburban house in Bromley with a driveway and a garage — the Nigerian expat dream. Glory, in contrast, is ‘the prodigal daughter’ to the Nigerian expat community — unmarried, living far away, and the one who did not return when her family needed her.
Oddly enough, their brother Victor does not receive the same condescending negativity from the community, despite the fact that Victor is in prison. He seems to be viewed with pity, and his family gets the same pity for their ‘difficult times’.
There’s a family sorrow that is rarely spoken of: Glory’s twin sister, Hope, passed away at a young age. Over the course of the novel, Glory starts delving into Hope’s story and discovers a shocking secret. Along the way, she seethes against the expectations of her diasporic community, and develops a budding romance with Julian, a fellow Nigerian-Brit.
This debut author has made Glory a less than appealing character. She is judgemental, defensive, impulsive, and self-absorbed. She flirts in an annoying manner, alternating between seductiveness and combativeness in what seems like a rather juvenile manner.
“Wow, so you still don’t know how to cook at your big age?”
She linked an arm through his, rubbing a hand up and down his sleeve. Despite the cold his body felt hot through the jumper, and Glory leaned into him.
The relationship with Julian takes up much of the book, and is rather distracting from the family dynamics that are at the heart of this novel.
To her credit, the author does give Glory a character arc over the course of the novel. It is more jagged than smooth, and the abrupt changes in her personality sometimes come out of nowhere, not necessarily correlated with any self-realization.
As a window into an immigrant community, the novel is moderately successful even though it breaks little new ground. The aunties sneer at the children who are too British, while the Nigerian-Brit children are torn between their ethnic background and their upbringing in Britain, much like any other immigrant community. The gossipy circles are always present. Glory overhears two women in a bathroom at the funeral.
“You know what happened with Victor, right? And now this sudden death…”
“To be honest, the tragedy started a long time ago. You know they had another daughter, right?”
“What was her name?”
“I can’t even remember now — I didn’t know the family at that time, actually.”
Rage coursed through Glory and she wanted to scream at the anonymous voices. The audacity of these witches gossiping about her family at her father’s funeral and they didn’t even know the name of her dead sister!
(I found Glory’s reactions to events perplexing at times. Why did it matter whether the gossips knew the name of the sister who died many years ago?).
The dialogue is sometimes Nigerian-Brit, and sometimes not. The elderly women above , and Glory and her family speak standard English, but the men in Julian’s barbershop say things like
“I shoulda known suttin’ was up when man turned up to the stop looking all smart an’ that.”
“I thought man was coming from church, ya nuh?”
Is the dialect a gender-specific thing? Or is the author inconsistent? I can’t say.
There are occasionally sharp sidelights into the stereotypes about Nigerians in England. Julian is not inclined to go to a fancy cafe (“one of those white places”) because
“We’re gonna sit down, be minding our own business, and I swear someone’s gonna come up to me asking if I’ve got any weed.”
Glory was rather a blank slate to be the center of this novel. There are some interesting aspects of one Nigerian character’s upbringing in a white British foster family that I wish had been explored in more depth. Victor’s story and his prison experience was also sharp, and would have been a pointedly interesting story on its own. Perhaps that will come in the next book from this author.
I can’t tell if you are recommending this novel or not.
Really interesting to read a review of another Nigerian novel, so many indeed are hitting the scene recently. Some have been great, but perhaps not all of them are…. Oh dear, that quote, about ‘twisting her mouth around her face’….awful, just awful! All the quotes you chose were spot on, so illustrative, like watching the trailer of a movie. With weak writing and nothing much to say which is original, and seemingly poorly explained and evidenced in many parts, esp of the protagonist, I will regard this novel is one to steer clear of!
Hey Susan, it was moderately interesting, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It had promise, but was unevenly paced, and the writing is just ok, not great or bad.
I was ambivalent about the book and I guess that showed up in my review, but not very clearly. Let me see if I can update the review a bit.