Title: Stay With Me
Author: Ayòbámi Adébáyò
Published: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 304
Rating: 4/5
Summary:
Set in Nigeria, this is about a woman, Yejide, and her husband who struggle to conceive a child, and when the husband, under the influence of his family, acquires a second wife, their life and love starts to unravel and disintegrate.
Review:
This was a phenomenal read and one I sped through very quickly.
This book is not particularly lyrical, but the writing style works so well with this kind of story. It's a plot-heavy novel and so much happens, but what's so great about it is that the characters don't suffer for it; they're still fully fleshed-out and believable. They're truly in the story, and you get to know them, not by the author describing them to you, but by how they react to what happens to them.
It deals with a lot of important and interwoven themes; love and how far you can stretch it before it breaks, marriage and the expectations and pressures it brings, and womanhood, parenthood and grief. All of them are handled well in their complexity. There's also unrest in the political background of the novel, which adds another important element.
This is the authors debut novel, which makes this all the more impressive. I would highly recommend it and I cannot wait to read whatever Adébáyò comes out with next.
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You can read more about it on Goodreads
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