Stay with Me by Ayòbámi Adébáyò

There is so much to treasure in Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s debut novel. Its freshness, for one, is remarkable: there are many novels on broken families and couples, many on domineering, abusive parents and in-laws. In the midst of such a timeless subject, Adébáyò delivers with aplomb a story that startles and guts you.

I don’t want to give anything away—Stay with Me is driven by a masterfully-paced plot, where secrets unfurl and shock you even at the very end – but it’s safe to say that this is a novel about a woman driven to her absolute wits’ end by her in-laws and her husband. Yejide is masterfully created, gloriously independent, sharp and fierce. Her sense of worth in Nigerian society is inextricably tied to her baby-bearing ability: though she desperately wants a child, she finds herself unable to conceive. Facing her in-laws’ increasing ill will, she dabbles in superstition, magic and prophets, a whole world of beliefs that she, a modern Nigerian, used to dismiss without a second thought. She starts to unravel when her in-laws impose a second wife on Akin, her husband.

The novel’s poignant force comes from the fact that this family drama is played out against the tumultuous political climate of the 1980s, where one does not know what the next day holds. The future’s a dangerous, foggy mess: politicians keep secrets, the army keeps its silence, and families have their own load of unspeakables. What is a woman’s ‘place’, when security comes with men, when opportunities for women are handed to them depending on how favourable they are to their husbands? Stay with Me also captures the schism of the African developing nation, one that struggles to reconcile traditions and superstition with technology and the modern world (I would know—if ever I fall pregnant, my mother will swaddle me in her ancestral potions, lotions and techniques).

The characters’ voices are an absolute delight throughout—from salon gossip to marital fights, the dialogue is on point, as realistic as they come, laugh-out-loud-while-you-cry brilliant. Take Yejide’s thoughts at the beginning of the novel, for instance, when the in-laws come into her home and announce that Akin is to have a second wife:

I had expected them to talk about my childlessness. I was armed with millions of smiles. Apologetic smiles, pity-me smiles, I-look-unto-God smiles […] I was armed with smiles for my lips, an appropriate sheen of tears for my eyes and sniffles for my nose.

She then cooks a meal with bad leftovers for them, and they have diarrhea. The seamless blend of laughter and private disaster pulls the reader in from the very first; this isn’t a novel which you read at a remove, it’s one that you love, one where you deeply care for the characters, for Yejide especially—and there isn’t a single moment where her strength, her fervid spirit doesn’t come through. She’ll live on in our minds, I am sure: a spell wrought by the novel’s title, by Adébáyò’s superb craftsmanship.

Knopf