... loving and lively ... In life, such steadfastness is welcome; in fiction, which tends to derive its life from rupture and breakage, less so. While I was carried smoothly through the travails of these women, a line from elsewhere crept up on me. It was the quip attributed to Francis Bacon, remade famous by Kanye, about champagne for real friends, real pain for sham friends, although in this case, 'fictional' replaces 'sham.' In other words, I caught myself thinking a sadistic thought. Then again, isn’t the best and truest way for an author to love her characters to drive them into the kind of pain — real pain — that strains and changes their bonds, and with that, their selves? ... Events are relayed in plain, genial prose, unfussed by the occasional cliché. Mystifyingly, some dramatic moments are ushered offstage or skated over ... This can lend much of the novel a feeling of account, rather than selectively crafted story. Nonetheless, Obaro’s unadorned style can come into its own, as it does most arrestingly with a bravura abortion scene. Here, the procedural quality of the writing takes on a political power; it seems entirely appropriate that we learn each step — the dilation, the curettage — all conducted illegally, under cover of darkness, in the Nigeria of 1984 ... The novel’s greatest pleasure, though, is the indelible, show-stealing Funmi.
... rich ... moving ... offers a memorable portrait of a country that has long been divided between a Christian south and a Muslim north. The vividly rendered wedding weekend is split as well ... The novel is pure sterling when describing the traditional Nigerian celebration ... The climactic wedding in the novel's final pages delivers just what readers hope for in terms of surprises, and it's well worth the wait. There are no fiddlers on roofs, but old traditions bounce and jolt along to great energy and expense, eventually falling away to herald new traditions as well as a new Destiny.
The story is told in flashbacks and present day in a way that helps them reconcile where they have ended up and where they once dreamed they’d go. A timeless examination of all the dreams you hold for yourself, the dreams your parents and others have for you, and how much you are able to follow your heart.
