A poignant, revealing, and rueful tale of how much the political can affect the personal.
Old-fashioned romance and street-level crime are woven into a coming-of-age saga set amid the political turmoil of early 1990s Nigeria.
The title of Ishola-Ayodeji’s captivating debut novel is something of a double-entendre, as it refers to both the heroine’s first name and her vexing state of being. Patience Adewale is an 18-year-old U.S.–born Nigerian student living in the city of Ibadan with her stern, domineering, and politically influential father, who demands two things of her: that she get her accounting degree from the University of Lagos and that she stop asking him (or anybody else) about the specific whereabouts of her birth mother, Folami, whom he banished to America. Growing up wealthy, sheltered, and insulated from the grimmer realities of Nigerian society, Patience believes her true destiny has been to make and design clothes in the U.S. and is willing to do whatever it takes to locate her mom and fulfill her ambition. She arrives in Lagos convinced that she won’t find what she wants in a classroom and instead makes her way to the seamier side of town to reconnect with Kash, her ne’er-do-well cousin, who engages in petty crimes with his roommate, Emeka. They share their living space with Emeka’s handsome, smarter brother, Chike, an upstanding, hardworking motorcycle taxi driver unable to find work worthy of his university degree in petroleum science. Chike is far more interested in Patience (and the feeling is mutual) than he is in pulling scams with his brother. Yet Emeka and Kash persuade Patience and Chike to help them separate a million Nigerian naira (about $2,400) from a local bank with a phony check. Though Chike’s dead-set against the plan, a wary-but-game Patience overcomes her own jittery reservations and carries out the masquerade required of her for the con, so badly is she wanting to leave home. (“The irony,” she reflects at one point, “needing to do something unlike herself to actually find herself.”) But one big score isn’t enough for Kash and Emeka, and as both Patience and Chike become more exasperated in their efforts to realize their dreams through conventional means, the deeper involved all four become in bigger and riskier illegalities. All this personal struggle takes place within the backdrop of the 1993 presidential election aimed at setting Nigeria on course for a democratic government after years of military rule. Ishola-Ayodeji is deft, shrewd, sometimes witty, and always observant about the social, economic, and political obstacles to Nigerians wishing only to live honorably and decently.
A poignant, revealing, and rueful tale of how much the political can affect the personal.Pub Date: May 3, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311691-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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