It's way too long since we had anything African...

This is by Nigerian author Ayobami Adebayo. It's her first novel, and it was published in 2017. My audio-version was brilliantly read by Adjoa Andoh (and I think I first came across this book via an Audiofile recommendation). It's another book that really lends itself to being listened to. There is plenty of pithy dialogue, spoken by a range of memorable characters.

The action is mostly set in Ilesa (northeast of Lagos), and covers a span of about 25 years. We alternate between the "present" (December 2008) and the mid-to-late 1980s, and the narration swivels between the perspectives of Yejide, a university graduate and capable businesswoman, and her husband, Akin.

Their relationship, which sparked as a coup de foudre when they were both students, forms the book's axis. (From here on, by the way, beware spoilers.)

Yejide and Akin are happy together, but no children are appearing, and this, in Yoruba culture (and in many other cultures, of course), is a Very Big Deal. The assumption is that this situation must be Yejide's fault, and everyone is ready to suggest something she can take, or someone she can visit for blessing. Based on our own brief experience in West Africa, this rings very true.

But nothing is working quickly enough to suit Moomi, Akin's mother. She has initially been quite nice to Yejide, whose own mother died in childbirth, leaving her to be brought up in a polygamous household by fairly neglectful stepmothers. But offspring are Moomi's obsession, and she insists that Akin take a second wife, even though one of Yejide's conditions for marriage was monogamy. The second wife is Funmi. (At this point, I was reminded of His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie, although the perspective is different.)


Not Nigeria, but still West Africa. Cote d'Ivoire, 1997-98

Spurred by the presence of this rival to even greater efforts, Yejide goes on a strange, rather creepy pilgrimage to what is deemed to be a miraculous mountain. And she comes back pregnant. Except she's not. Stress from the constant nagging of the family has triggered a condition called pseudocyesis. In a stunning example of mind over matter, the body simulates all the symptoms of pregnancy -- enlarged abdomen, amenorrhea, cravings, morning sickness -- and yet there is no baby. For someone desiring a real pregnancy, this must be an absolutely tragic situation. After a long period of denial (that goes on way longer than gestation ever could), Yejide faces up to facts, and seeks professional help.

Then she has a brief affair with Akin's brother, the feckless Dotun. And lo and behold, there's a baby. A little girl called Olamide. But she dies while still very young. It sounds like sudden infant death syndrome, aka cot death. These cases are generally unpredictable and inexplicable. But Yejide is racked by guilt.

Relations with Dotun resume, albeit spasmodically. And two more children are born. Both, it turns out, have sickle cell disease (SCD). (It's not stated in so many words, but possibly Olamide did too, as cot deaths are more prevalent in families with sickle cell history.) As this disease can only be passed on in certain circumstances, and as Akin doesn't have the relevant gene, it is clear that these children are also Dotun's.

Then we learn that all this has not happened by chance... Akin has talked Dotun into taking his place as Yejide's sexual partner, in order to perpetuate the family line, and save face. But of course, Akin's "permission" comes with very strict guidelines, and when Dotun oversteps the mark -- by having sex with Yejide when he's no longer "supposed" to be -- then there's a big quarrel, and the brothers become estranged. They never reveal to their family the real cause of their falling-out. Way too shaming...

The second of the children, Sesan, also dies, after several of the painful episodes associated with SCD. This is a lot of trauma for one woman, and when the third child, Rotimi, comes along, Yejide distances herself from the little girl, unable to let herself become vulnerable only to have her heart broken yet again. By this time Akin has also told Yejide about his manipulative little arrangement with Dotun. (He doesn't tell her, however, that Funmi's death -- ostensibly accidental -- was at least helped along by him, after she goads him about the impotence she very clearly recognizes.) When there's a crisis with Rotimi (at a time when she is with her father, and her mother is elsewhere), Yejide withdraws. She can't face any of this any more, and sets up a new life for herself in Jos.

It is only much later -- when the 2008 timeline brings the two together for a family funeral -- that we realize that Rotimi has survived.

It's a bit of an emotional wringer, but it takes us very effectively through the traumas of dealing with childlessness, and then of losing a child (with so many relatives blithely telling Yejide that she shouldn't worry, as she can have another one). These tragedies are all the greater for Yejide since she grew up so alone, constantly frozen out of a family that disparaged her late mother.



There are many interesting themes running through the novel:

1. The flip-side to the victimization of childless women (the novel's core topic) is the quagmire of deception and outright violence that males might be drawn into, in an effort to live up to absurdly confining definitions of masculinity. Akin is a bit of an idiot (OK, a LOT of an idiot), but we are, I think, supposed to feel a measure of sympathy for him. Patriarchy ultimately harms everyone.

2. Yoruba customs are very much at the forefront, as Josephine Olufunmilayo Alexander explains: "The name of each character contributes to the meaning and interpretation of the novel. For example Iyejide, shortened as Yejide, is a name given to a female child whose mother died during or just after giving birth. It is not surprising that death follows Yejide throughout the novel, as her children die after birth. Akin is a name given to male children meaning a 'brave or strong one.' It depicts masculinity, which Akin attempts to display in all his decisions and actions, however misguided... The names Akin and Yejide give to their children also tell a tale of their struggle to have children. Olamide, the name of the first child, means 'my wealth has arrived.' This is because among the Yoruba people, a child is equated to wealth. Sesan, the name of the second child, is short for Oluwasesan, meaning 'God has rewarded me' -- in this case with another child after the death of the first child." According to Yoruba tradition, "abiku" are spirits who appear as children fated to die before puberty. Rotimi, the name they give the third child, means "stay with me", and it is often given to a child thought to be an abiku: "It is a plea for the child to stay alive and not die like the other two."

3. On a lighter note, all the references to pounded yam made me yearn for the foutou d'igname of our Cote d'Ivoire days. Not to mention foutou manioc (pounded cassava), and foutou banane (pounded plantain). Foutou banane was my favourite...

4. Chugging along in the background is the newsreel of socio/political events in Nigeria as the 1980s slid into the 1990s. There are student demonstrations, violently suppressed. There are coups and rumours of coups. (In 1985 Babangida ousted Buhari. A further coup attempt that same year was thwarted, and 13 military officers were executed. A coup attempt in 1990 was foiled, but another coup in 1993 brought Abacha to power -- a name I know well from my BBC days.) Elections are held, and then annulled. We hear of bands of robbers, so confident and organized that they message ahead to their victims to prepare what they want to take away, and sit in their living-rooms swigging whisky before dragging their haul away. We hear of the corrupt cops who are paid off by these people, and the vigilante groups that organize in self-defence. Mayowa Omogbenigun notes that there's a running parallel between events in Nigeria and the lead couple's relationship. Lizzie Skurnick develops this idea: "Like Nigeria's middle class, quiescent in the face of political upheaval, Akin and Yejide keep accepting the unthinkable to keep their family intact. As Yejide and Akin recount the story of their romance, they also reveal the lies and omissions that are destroying them from the inside. 'Sometimes faith,' Yejide tells us, 'is easier than doubt.'"



***

And that last sentence brings us to what has to be the novel's greatest flaw... It is made very clear that Yejide, despite being very keen on the handsome Akin, was keen to postpone sexual relations until after they were married. She enters the marriage a virgin. But it's the 1980s, and she's at university. She couldn't possibly have been entirely ignorant of the mechanisms of reproduction. So she must have been aware of Akin's impotence... And yet she claims she wasn't, until Dotun came clean, and revealed the brothers' plot.

Alexander explains this by evoking the powerful capacity for self-deception that overwhelms human beings in certain circumstances. There's none so blind as s/he who will not see, it is said. This is expressed best here, when Yejide says of Akin: "What did I know? I knew that I was once invested in his lies as he was, probably more than he was -- I imagine he at least admitted the truth to himself. I could not do that until Dotun had spoken the words; I could not allow him to be flawed. So I bit my tongue when customers talked about sex and I let him hold my hand when he told the doctor our sex life was absolutely normal. I told myself I was respecting my husband. I convinced myself that my silence meant 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 than doubt."

Hmmm. I see Alexander's point. Self-deception is a remarkable thing. But pushed so far? I guessed early on that the fertility problem was actually Akin's, and this incongruity -- this bit of blatant implausibility in what was otherwise an emotionally very credible novel -- nagged at me throughout. Yejide might perhaps have sucked up the matriarchs' disapproval for love of Akin, but could she really have carried on torturing and blaming herself, when she must have known, at some level at least, that it really wasn't her fault?

I also wonder about the ending. I understand that Yejide would run away from the prospect of further pain. She has suffered more than most. But would she really not even enquire about Rotimi -- if only to make sure that her worst fears had been fulfilled?

Finally, Ikhide Ikheloa is a little concerned about all the acclaim from Western audiences... Is this another case of writing to cater to pre-conceived ideas? He puts it quite baldly: "Stay With Me is also a conversation about what happens to indigenous narrative if it has to be paid for by the other. Perhaps it is time for me to stop sneering at 'African fiction', as made to order for the paying Western readers and admit that it’s a genre that is here to stay. I am not happy about it, but what do I expect young African writers to do? The reading and paying audience is abroad. He who pays the piper dictates the tune. A lot of the work I speak of is actually Diaspora writing pretending to speak for 'Africa.' It is perversely important work, but 99% of Africa’s narrative breathes loudly on the Internet... Those who control the narrative literally control the literary world. Chinua Achebe reminds us of the African proverb: Until the lions get their own historian, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. Traditional African narrative as exists in books is controlled by the gatekeepers of Western publishing houses."

This is all a little reminiscent of the Reading Lolita argument, although no-one is suggesting there are political motives involved. It's certainly true that anyone who already assumes that women have a tough time in Nigeria will find little to contradict that idea in Stay With Me -- except, perhaps, for the fact that Yejide is portrayed as a competent urban women (when she's not being driven to distraction by the have-a-baby crew), and she eventually breaks away and starts a new life without her conniving husband. Anyone who already assumes that corruption and coups are the mainstays of life in Africa will likewise be confirmed in that belief.

Pa Ikhide is not bowled over by Stay With Me, but he still recommends it, and urges us to keep an eye on Adebayo, who "is going to write awesome things".

I have another lined up...


Ouo, Burkina Faso, 1997