sjklass's review against another edition
3.0
3 1/2. Modern love and life juxtaposed with strongly held cultural beliefs and traditions on a young Nigerian couple's path to parenthood. I can’t help but feel that Akin and Yegide might have been alright if not for family expectations and societal pressure.
Akin - “The shame I felt left no room for any other thing, not even hope. I was not angry with my brother; already I was realizing that all my rage had been an affectation. Something I’d reached for as a defence against shame. Anger is easier than shame”. (p212)
Yegide - “I told myself I was respecting my husband. I convinced myself that my silence meant I was a good wife. But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves. I did not ask questions because I did not want to know the answers. It was convenient to believe my husband was trustworthy; sometimes faith is easier than doubt”. (p233)
Akin - “The shame I felt left no room for any other thing, not even hope. I was not angry with my brother; already I was realizing that all my rage had been an affectation. Something I’d reached for as a defence against shame. Anger is easier than shame”. (p212)
Yegide - “I told myself I was respecting my husband. I convinced myself that my silence meant I was a good wife. But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves. I did not ask questions because I did not want to know the answers. It was convenient to believe my husband was trustworthy; sometimes faith is easier than doubt”. (p233)
demottar's review against another edition
4.0
It’s probably going to take me a while to digest everything that Stay With Me offers, because though it’s not a lengthy novel, it is a weighty one.
Stylistically, Stay With Me is superb. Ayobami Adebayo’s narrative voice is fresh and simple while somehow also being timeless and lush. Her characters are very human: extremely interesting, devastatingly flawed, and seeking absolution from any source they can find.
I don’t typically get frustrated when characters make poor choices, but this book is packed with gut-wrenching results from ill-thought choices and it’s difficult to take it all in. At the very least, I couldn’t stop reading it and won’t soon forget it. At the most, this is a searing story of how family relationships are eroded when identity is defined solely by societal expectations or cultural pressures.
Stylistically, Stay With Me is superb. Ayobami Adebayo’s narrative voice is fresh and simple while somehow also being timeless and lush. Her characters are very human: extremely interesting, devastatingly flawed, and seeking absolution from any source they can find.
I don’t typically get frustrated when characters make poor choices, but this book is packed with gut-wrenching results from ill-thought choices and it’s difficult to take it all in. At the very least, I couldn’t stop reading it and won’t soon forget it. At the most, this is a searing story of how family relationships are eroded when identity is defined solely by societal expectations or cultural pressures.
erinbro1's review against another edition
4.0
Wow, what an intense read this was! I found myself racing through this novel, so impatient to find out what would happen next while also dreading the next twist in the story.
I didn't realize how incredibly dramatic this book was, and it felt like I was reading a thriller. But this book is also so well written and makes so many interesting points about marriage, motherhood, and even democracy. Ayobami Adebayo is so talented and I loved the journey she took me on with this novel.
I didn't realize how incredibly dramatic this book was, and it felt like I was reading a thriller. But this book is also so well written and makes so many interesting points about marriage, motherhood, and even democracy. Ayobami Adebayo is so talented and I loved the journey she took me on with this novel.
nicki_j's review against another edition
4.0
Wow, this book was really hard to read at times, but totally engrossing. I couldn't put it down. It is hard to believe that this was written about the 1980's, not 100 years beforehand. This book, like [b:The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters|40908064|The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters|Balli Kaur Jaswal|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1552458838l/40908064._SY75_.jpg|63774527], reminded me just how bad things are for women around the world. It's infuriating.
simonmee's review against another edition
3.0
You got me.
You pulled it off with the big reveal. I wasn’t clever enough to work it out myself.
You created a mystery: “How the absolute **** could those characters act like that?” I asked myself.
And you answered that question. So bravo.
The Unreliable Narrator versus The Unlikeable Narrator
Yejide and Akin are a married Nigerian couple under pressure to have children. Shock, horror, things do not go well. Adébáyọ̀ leads us to believe it is an inexplicable fertility problem:
When the doctor asked about our sex life, Akin held my hand before he answered and stroked my thumb as he said, Our sex life is normal, absolutely normal.
The big reveal towards the end is that Akin is impotent. Yejide withholds from us that Akin is lying to the doctor. Learning of Akin’s impotence dramatically changes our previous perceptions of characters’ actions.
To give an example of the cleverness of Adébáyọ̀’s misdirection, while leaving clues, look at their relation with Akin’s brother Dotun. Akin enlists Dotun to impregnate Yejide, which Yejide doesn’t know at the time (I would suggest suspending your disbelief on some of what happens to enjoy the wide points). When Yejide first sleeps with Dotun, we get a series of wildly contradictory emotions within one page:
I felt a strong sense of pity for my poor sister-in-law. Was this it?
There was something different about being with him, something fuller. I wanted to try it again.
My first instinct was to tell Akin, but how does one tell one’s husband: I want you to fuck me the way your brother did?
I wanted to run downstairs to Dotun, to tell him, See! See what Akin can make me feel on just my face. SEE!
From a perspective of infertility, it reads like a rollercoaster ride of insanity. From the perspective of Akin’s impotence, the lines take on new meaning. The uncertainties of Yejide are due to a new, and very different experience.
Now, the explanation doesn’t make Yejide a good person (or Akin, for that matter), but Adébáyọ̀ doesn’t owe us that. She showed us a character who’s actions and feelings seemed inexplicable, then with one new fact, made them very explicable. As to whether they are justifiable… …well, the reader can take it or leave it.
Imperfections
That being said, the book should probably carry a trigger warning for anyone suffering from erectile dysfunction. Prepare to feel insecure as Dotun later teased my body to orgasm after orgasm. Yejide clearly likes what Dotun… ...uh… …has, even though Dotun isn’t exactly a success story in life otherwise. Each to their own I guess but, dare I say it, there seems to have been a failure of imagination on Yejide’s and Akin’s part up to the point of Dotun’s introduction, from a purely pleasure perspective.
The big reveal does adversely affect the characterisation of Akin. Yejide is a flawed character who may make disagreeable but comprehensible decisions. Akin is just a pastiche of a character who actions I only comprehend as set-ups for Yejide. Akin is often absent for reasons that are somewhat but inadequately revealed. He’s also a blunderer, whether in his over-complicated set up of Yejide and Dotun, or being unable to not shove someone down stairs. Akin is a plot device, and a flaccid one at that. Unsurprisingly I am totally unconvinced of Yejide and Akin’s great love. They once each thought the other was hot and that’s then expected to pull the emotional weight of their relationship. It’s doesn’t work and I don’t believe it.
There’s a couple of what I feel are mechanical issues with the first person perspectives:
We understand that of Yejide is having a phantom pregnancy early in the story because of multiple sources of evidence presented to her. She receives the information in a form she can process and then... …simply says, ’The doctor I met does not know what she is doing’. It feels like she is artificially self-aware of her unself-awareness.
Akin doesn’t like the local story of Iroko, which ends sadly with the loss of a loved one:
I hated this version because I did not believe that anyone would trade a child for anything else.
So she “improves” it, in that she makes it more random, much sadder and removes its moral. She tells this incredibly grim story to her 5 month-old daughter because, ummmm, she’s improved it. Five-month daughter dies immediately after (unrelated reasons to being told this story, I should add). It transparently feels like Adébáyọ̀ had Yejide create a sadder story of Iroko to ensure we feel sad in the immediately subsequent scene.
But I did get got. Credit where credit is due.
You pulled it off with the big reveal. I wasn’t clever enough to work it out myself.
You created a mystery: “How the absolute **** could those characters act like that?” I asked myself.
And you answered that question. So bravo.
Spoiler
The Unreliable Narrator versus The Unlikeable Narrator
Yejide and Akin are a married Nigerian couple under pressure to have children. Shock, horror, things do not go well. Adébáyọ̀ leads us to believe it is an inexplicable fertility problem:
When the doctor asked about our sex life, Akin held my hand before he answered and stroked my thumb as he said, Our sex life is normal, absolutely normal.
The big reveal towards the end is that Akin is impotent. Yejide withholds from us that Akin is lying to the doctor. Learning of Akin’s impotence dramatically changes our previous perceptions of characters’ actions.
To give an example of the cleverness of Adébáyọ̀’s misdirection, while leaving clues, look at their relation with Akin’s brother Dotun. Akin enlists Dotun to impregnate Yejide, which Yejide doesn’t know at the time (I would suggest suspending your disbelief on some of what happens to enjoy the wide points). When Yejide first sleeps with Dotun, we get a series of wildly contradictory emotions within one page:
I felt a strong sense of pity for my poor sister-in-law. Was this it?
There was something different about being with him, something fuller. I wanted to try it again.
My first instinct was to tell Akin, but how does one tell one’s husband: I want you to fuck me the way your brother did?
I wanted to run downstairs to Dotun, to tell him, See! See what Akin can make me feel on just my face. SEE!
From a perspective of infertility, it reads like a rollercoaster ride of insanity. From the perspective of Akin’s impotence, the lines take on new meaning. The uncertainties of Yejide are due to a new, and very different experience.
Now, the explanation doesn’t make Yejide a good person (or Akin, for that matter), but Adébáyọ̀ doesn’t owe us that. She showed us a character who’s actions and feelings seemed inexplicable, then with one new fact, made them very explicable. As to whether they are justifiable… …well, the reader can take it or leave it.
Imperfections
That being said, the book should probably carry a trigger warning for anyone suffering from erectile dysfunction. Prepare to feel insecure as Dotun later teased my body to orgasm after orgasm. Yejide clearly likes what Dotun… ...uh… …has, even though Dotun isn’t exactly a success story in life otherwise. Each to their own I guess but, dare I say it, there seems to have been a failure of imagination on Yejide’s and Akin’s part up to the point of Dotun’s introduction, from a purely pleasure perspective.
The big reveal does adversely affect the characterisation of Akin. Yejide is a flawed character who may make disagreeable but comprehensible decisions. Akin is just a pastiche of a character who actions I only comprehend as set-ups for Yejide. Akin is often absent for reasons that are somewhat but inadequately revealed. He’s also a blunderer, whether in his over-complicated set up of Yejide and Dotun, or being unable to not shove someone down stairs. Akin is a plot device, and a flaccid one at that. Unsurprisingly I am totally unconvinced of Yejide and Akin’s great love. They once each thought the other was hot and that’s then expected to pull the emotional weight of their relationship. It’s doesn’t work and I don’t believe it.
There’s a couple of what I feel are mechanical issues with the first person perspectives:
We understand that of Yejide is having a phantom pregnancy early in the story because of multiple sources of evidence presented to her. She receives the information in a form she can process and then... …simply says, ’The doctor I met does not know what she is doing’. It feels like she is artificially self-aware of her unself-awareness.
Akin doesn’t like the local story of Iroko, which ends sadly with the loss of a loved one:
I hated this version because I did not believe that anyone would trade a child for anything else.
So she “improves” it, in that she makes it more random, much sadder and removes its moral. She tells this incredibly grim story to her 5 month-old daughter because, ummmm, she’s improved it. Five-month daughter dies immediately after (unrelated reasons to being told this story, I should add). It transparently feels like Adébáyọ̀ had Yejide create a sadder story of Iroko to ensure we feel sad in the immediately subsequent scene.
But I did get got. Credit where credit is due.
emilylhelt's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Child death, and Infertility
jenndoee's review against another edition
emotional
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I usually don't go for historical books but it had the perfect amount of reference for the reader to truly feel like you are in the characters head. I loved it!
christiek's review against another edition
4.0
I love how fiction about people and places who live lives so foreign to mine usually ends up being entirely relatable. So much of what happens in this novel is 100% unfamiliar to me or my culture (the children's graves (!what?!), the way Moomi is obeyed and has so much influence, multiple wives) and yet, we're all struggling in the same ways to have agency and to craft solutions to the issues in our lives that we find unbearable. This novel captures those struggles beautifully with interesting plotting and complex major and minor characters.
The book is weakest when it tries to bring in the surrounding external security and political realities of Nigeria at the time. The robbers issue just sort of disappeared, seemingly having an intense impact only for a little while. The election toward the end sort of brushes the trajectory of our plot, but the build up to that moment made it seem like we would explore those political issues more thoroughly. Adebayo's writing made me want to better understand those points in a history unknown to me, but left me hanging.
The book is weakest when it tries to bring in the surrounding external security and political realities of Nigeria at the time. The robbers issue just sort of disappeared, seemingly having an intense impact only for a little while. The election toward the end sort of brushes the trajectory of our plot, but the build up to that moment made it seem like we would explore those political issues more thoroughly. Adebayo's writing made me want to better understand those points in a history unknown to me, but left me hanging.
antisocialsciences's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0