Review: A Spell of Good Things (by Ayobami Adebayo)

My Rating:  4 stars

Ayobami Adebayo’s debut novel Stay With Me on my TBR for a while, but unfortunately, despite the best of intentions, I never got around to picking it up (classic case of “too many books, too little time”).  Well, a few weeks ago, when an ARC of her second book, A Spell of Good Things, landed in my email box, I was determined that, this time, I will get around to it.  And I am so glad I did because Adebayo’s writing here is amazing — poetic, lyrical, completely immersive and engaging.  I also appreciated getting to learn about Nigeria and a culture that I knew next to nothing about prior to reading this book — though I will admit that the sentences and phrases written in an untranslated Nigerian dialect throughout the book did throw me for a loop in that I had to stop and look stuff up at times in order to fully understand what I was reading.

With that said though, the book’s subject matter is actually quite heavy.   The story revolves around two main characters — a female doctor in her twenties named Wuraola and a teenage boy named Eniola — from two Nigerian families at opposite ends of the economic spectrum (the extremely wealthy vs the devastatingly impoverished, the “haves” vs the “have-nots”) whose paths unexpectedly yet inevitably intertwine, amidst a backdrop of economic strife, political corruption, violence, and tragedy (and that’s just scratching the surface). Even though there were moments of levity (manifested primarily through one of the Wuraola aunties and a few other relatives) interspersed primarily throughout the first half of the story, much of the second half had an undercurrent of bleakness and sadness to it that I actually found difficult to shake even after I had turned the last page.

I don’t want to say too much about this one, as I feel this is the type of story that you have to actually experience for it to be most impactful. What I will say is that this is one of those quiet, slow-burn type stories that takes its time to build up and play out — thoughtfully, meticulously, carefully — then in the last quarter or so of the book, the story suddenly hits you in the gut and you’re left reeling a bit.  For me, I found myself still thinking about that last quarter of the book even long after I had finished reading — I kept playing though different scenarios and wondering, if certain people had acted differently, if some circumstances had been different, would that have changed things in the end?  

While this was not an easy read by any means (especially emotionally), I’m glad I picked it up, as it was a unique, thought-provoking experience that doesn’t come around too often.  I know for sure now that I need to go back and read Adebayo’s debut, sooner rather than later.

Received ARC from Knopf via NetGalley.