This is by Jessica George, and it was published, to great acclaim, in 2023.

My audio-version was brilliantly narrated by Heather Agyepong, and was an unbeatable companion on a long bus journey to Sibu and back.

I have read some pretty heavy books this month... A Burning, Yonnondio, Prophet Song, Punching the World... All good, but all depressing. So I was happy to establish, just a few minutes in, that this was going to be lighter, warmer, more amusing.

Now, when I go on to say that the book deals with depression, bereavement, and identity crisis, you'll start to wonder about my definition of "lighter". But it's all to do with the lead character, Madeleine Wright, aka Maddie. She lives in London, and is the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants. She's struggling when we first meet her. At 25, she still lives at home, and a lot of her time is occupied with taking care of her father, who suffers from Parkinson's Disease (there's a professional carer, too, but he covers the periods when Maddie's at work). Mum (who's always on Maddie's case, doling out religious advice, and wanting to know when her daughter's going to get married) spends every other year in Ghana, where she runs a business (apparently a particularly unlucrative one, since she often has to call on Maddie for financical support). James, Maddie's older brother, always has something more important to do than supporting his sister and father. So, Maddie has had to step up, with the result that her social life is minimal. To add to the mix, she hates her job (as a PA in a theatre company).

So, it's serious enough stuff. But Maddie's first-person narration is very engaging. She knows everything that's wrong with her life, but she's not a self-pitier, she knows how to laugh at herself, and she comes across, very unselfconsciously, as a kind and generous person. All her life, she has been haunted by Mum's stern warning not to tell anyone about family business. So she has a tradition of bottling everything up, and not coming clean to friends about what's really going on in her life. To us privileged readers, however, Maddie serves it all up. It feels real, and moving, but she doesn't burden us. The tone, with this very clever balance, is expertly managed. You might cringe at Maddie's naivete sometimes, but you're very much on her side.



One of the sources of humour -- but also pathos -- in the book is its very internetty character. Emails and messages move the plot forward, and Maddie consults Google about everything, revealing lots about her own anxiety, isolation, and insecurity in the process. The often very amusing -- because terribly recognizable -- answers she comes up with act as a sort of Greek chorus on the state of the world. The pseudo-reddit threads are particularly good...

Anyway, Mum's impending return means that Maddie is finally ready to move into a flat. Now, at last, she has flatmates (a mixed blessing), and enough independence to contemplate drawing up a list of things the "new Maddie" would like to accomplish. It doesn't help that she's (unfairly) fired from the theatre job. But, because she's obviously very competent, she fairly soon finds another position as an editorial assistant. She acquires a boyfriend. She starts to socialize. She starts to experiment.

(Spoilers ahead from here on... Caveat lector...)

In a twist of fate that we pessimistic people can so readily identify with, Dad dies. Not long after Maddie has moved out, and on his birthday. She was supposed to be bringing over a cake, but -- even more guilt-inducingly -- an innocent bit of partying the night before made her oversleep, so that she misses the early part of the birthday, and doesn't get to see him that one last time.

Maddie is already suffering from depression when we meet her (she doesn't realize it, but we can spot all the signs). Not surprisingly, everything becomes worse after these traumatic events.

Her relationship with one of her flatmates quickly sours (partly her fault, as she recognizes, but not entirely, as we recognize...). Two boyfriends in succession turn out to be toxic in various ways. And she struggles in her new job to get recognition for her creative input.

But, bit by bit, she learns to stand up for herself, to express what she needs, to push back against exploitation -- and to get professional help with her depression.


My favourite Ghanaians

Four themes really stood out for me:

The first was parental relationships. Maddie's is not a family that has ever gone in for closeness (yep, recognize that...). Mum exerts a hectoring, hovering kind of maternal presence -- often from afar -- and is utterly tone-deaf to her daughter's needs and emotions. Dad, even when well, was fairly aloof, and Maddie never spent that much time with him as she was growing up. But that all changed with his illness, and she became his fixed point, conscientiously and lovingly spending precious time with him. This can't be said of Mum or James, and testimonies from others (and, ultimately, the message of her father's will) make clear how much he appreciated her care and support.

George is obviously writing from personal experience. She, too, was the child of Ghanaian immigrant parents; she studied English Literature, and worked as an editorial assistant, just like Maddie; and she, too, looked after her father as he struggled with Parkinson's Disease. It was the effort to deal with her grief -- by writing down thoughts and feelings -- that provided the inspiration for the book, and clearly lent it authenticity.

Mum -- well, you start out disliking and laughing at her. But she has had her trials, too. Financial pressures meant she had to separate from the real love of her youth (who has obviously been lurking in the background again for the last few years), and her marriage to Maddie's and James's father was an arranged one. She's hypocritical, insensitive, and utterly annoying, but she does start to change. A bit, anyway...


Jessica George

The second theme I identified with is the idea of responsibility. Maddie's nickname is Maame. The word has multiple meanings in Twi, but in her case it meant "woman". It's a term of endearment, but it's given to her when she's still quite young, and it implies that she has grown up, and can start to shoulder burdens. She starts to hate the name, because it's a symbol of premature and unsolicited responsiblity. It's as though she's the only grown-up in the family, managing the finances, being there, taking care of Dad. But being Maame made her grow up too soon, so that she has missed out on the grand carelessness and craziness that normally come with youth. As the narrative goes on, Maddie learns to embrace the Maame role, albeit in a more controlled way. Without it, after all, she wouldn't have had the privilege of getting to know her father. But the pleasing-and-being-needed dynamic is a dangerous, dangerous tightrope.

Again, this is something that George wrote right from the heart. She says in an interview: "I was a big people pleaser. I was the responsible one. I loved when everyone was happy, even though I was falling apart trying to juggle everything. Maddie has this moment where she breaks down because she’s been a people pleaser for so long. It’s that classic case of when you hold things too tightly to your chest you just explode. I’ve had that moment and so it made sense for Maddie to have that moment. It was the catalyst for her to realise. I wish it hadn’t been such a mentally draining experience to realise that you need to stop being a people pleaser. You need to stop being the responsible one at a detriment to yourself... She knew that her Dad loved her. He knew that she loved him. And so it’s difficult to say stop being the people pleaser because it’s so hard to get out of that."

As for me, I turned over the responsibility of looking after aging parents to others (a circumstance that still induces guilt, I admit, although I'm not sure what else I could have done). But I vividly remember a primary school report praising my willingness to take responsibility. It very much made me feel that this was a quality I needed to strive to retain. And that feeling has coloured every single relationship since...


Classic Ghanaian Kente cloth. Material like this was readily available in Cote d'Ivoire, and I loved it

The third factor that rang a bell was Maddie's attempt to navigate a more contemporary version of Christianity. Religion is obviously an important component in her upbringing, but she turns from her mother's traditional congregation to a younger church with a more modern feel: "They find ways to make the Bible relatable and I don't leave feeling like I'm not ENOUGH of a Christian to call myself one."

The fourth element that stood out was not exactly something I can identify with, but was definitely something I found instructive. I've read enough to understand a bit about the immigrant experience, and the constant juggling act between the new culture and the old culture. But I was struck by Maddie's description of what it's like to be black in mostly white spaces. Quite early in the narrative, she tells us: "The departments I interacted with were stiflingly white, to the point where in every meeting I took minutes for, I was the only Black person in the room. You have no idea (or maybe you do?) how this can make you feel. It's mentally exhausting trying to figure out if I'm taking that comment on my hair or lunch too seriously. It's isolating when no one I know here is reading the Black authors I am or watching the same TV shows." Later, when she goes for an interview for her new job, she remarks: "I’m the only Black person in the room when I walk in but I don’t know for sure that there are no other Black staff members. Someone could be off sick or on annual leave. Should I ask? No, of course you can’t ask. How would that sound? Do you have any questions for me, Maddie? Yes, would I be the only Black person you’ve hired? And if so, why is that?"

According to this study, it's a very tiring and stressful business to be the first, only, or one of just few people of colour in any given setting. One interviewee notes: "I currently am the only Black person in my entire company and it is the most exhausting experience of my life." And white people just don't get that: "The reality vs. perception gap is evident when 78% of respondents [in a leadership programme] say they face greater scrutiny because of their race, yet fewer than half -- 29% of white respondents -- believe this to be so... Those who find themselves the only person of color can experience emotional whiplash from being showcased as a token in high-visibility situations where diversity is on display, or conversely, being ignored or excluded." The most helpful thing to do is at least acknowledge there might be a problem, rather than pretend or assume there isn't, and I'm not sure I've always done that.


More Kente cloth

***

If I have one gripe, it's that the ending seemed a little too fairytale... Maddie comes into some money, starts to make progress at work, gets a green light for her writing, moves in with a good friend, AND gets a really nice boyfriend. All just a little too good to be true? Maybe. But then, she does deserve it...

And George herself is proof that miracles do happen. After five attempts to write a book didn't get anywhere, it was the one that featured her own grief over her father that touched a chord, and took off: "A year after she started writing Maame, in summer 2021, George was offered a two-book deal with leading publishers Hodder & Stoughton after an (almost-unheard-of-in-the-industry) eight-way auction. It was exactly the pinch-herself moment the now 28-year-old had been dreaming of for years -- and, as it turned out, just the beginning of a chain of pinch-herself moments." She's now a millionaire... Technically, anyway.

All power to her... She's created something that all kinds of people recognize: "Maddie’s struggles with her family are interspersed with relatable scenes, from flatmate nights out to painful sexual encounters, which is perhaps what makes Maame seem so real. Nods to pizzerias in Clapham and rush-hour Thameslink trains make it a true London story, but the themes clearly feel universal, given that readers around the world have been in touch. George says she’s had messages like 'I’ve had that boyfriend' or 'I’ve had that boss' or 'thank you for showing that the grief process isn’t linear', but also some less-expected ones: 'I had one guy who was like, "I really relate to Maddie having back pain in her twenties!"... It’s very random but it’s very true -- we all need ergonomic chairs now and we’re not even 50.'"

And her advice for aspiring writers: "Keep writing..."