A Spell of Good Things

Ayòbámi Adébáyò

Canongate

Otago Daily Times, 2023

Informed by her own experience, Ayòbámi Adébáyò’s booker-longlisted second novel unflinching exposes Nigeria’s economic inequalities and political corruption, memorialising “[the] many small tragedies that the collective consciousness can’t process…[that] just keep happening and falling away.”

Set at the start of the new millennium, the story is told from the perspective of two families, one from either side of the social divide. The first is that of a young boy called Eniolá, whose middle-class life evaporates when his history-teacher father loses his job, the new government having decided “[history] would do nothing for the nation’s development”. All he wants is to complete secondary school so he can attend University and become “an engineer, doctor or politician who can afford to drive a new Mercedes-Benz”, but his parents can’t even afford to pay for his apprenticeship fees, let alone his education. At school, he endures weeks of floggings for the outstanding money before being excluded altogether, humiliations further intensified by being forced to beg on the street to pay for food and rent.  So, when he is offered employment by a prominent local politician, the chance of financial remuneration outweighs any concerns about exactly what the job entails.

The second belongs to Wúraolá, a junior doctor whose wealthy parent’s insistence that she marry a man of ‘good stock’ forces her to walk a tightrope between traditional expectations and career. Her engagement to Kúnlé, the son of a family friend whose father is running for state Governor, is a cause for great celebration. What matters is that he occasionally beats her when he loses his temper? She adores him, and it would break her mother’s heart if she called the engagement off.  

As the story progresses, the lives of these two families occasionally touch one another, leaving little mark until a final, shocking collision that threatens to destroy them both and reveals the fragility of the line between good fortune and disaster.

A Spell of Good Things is unapologetically a story in, of, and from Nigeria. It abounds with the smells, sights, and sounds of Ijesa, the city in which it is set, and the text is seasoned with Yoruban words and phrases we are left to interpret by context. Although the central themes of injustice, corruption, and political and domestic violence are confronting, the novel also celebrates women’s resilience within a staunchly traditional society where family obligations are foundational. Take, for example, Wúraolá’s mother and aunts, who have not only married their way out of poverty but also collectively (and covertly) purchased land of their own as insurance against bad fortune.  Or Eniolá’s mother, holding her own family together through sheer determination while her husband collapses under the weight of debilitating depression.

It is a brave writer who is willing to expose the ugly part of their country to the sunlight, and Adébáyò describes her feelings about Nigeria as frustrating and complex. Despite this, it remains her home, one to which she remains committed, for good or bad.