{"id":1606,"date":"2023-01-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T21:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=1606"},"modified":"2025-01-01T10:09:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-31T21:09:31","slug":"a-spell-of-good-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2023\/01\/01\/a-spell-of-good-things\/","title":{"rendered":"A Spell of Good Things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em><strong>Ay\u00f2b\u00e1mi Ad\u00e9b\u00e1y\u00f2<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Canongate<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, 2023<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Informed by her own experience, Ay\u00f2b\u00e1mi Ad\u00e9b\u00e1y\u00f2\u2019s booker-longlisted second novel unflinching exposes Nigeria\u2019s economic inequalities and political corruption, memorialising <em>\u201c[the] many small tragedies that the collective consciousness can\u2019t process\u2026[that] just keep happening and falling away.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">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 Eniol\u00e1, whose middle-class life evaporates when his history-teacher father loses his job, the new government having decided <em>\u201c[history] would do nothing for the nation\u2019s development\u201d.<\/em> All he wants is to complete secondary school so he can attend University and become <em>\u201can engineer, doctor or politician who can afford to drive a new Mercedes-Benz\u201d<\/em>, but his parents can\u2019t 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The second belongs to W\u00faraol\u00e1, a junior doctor whose wealthy parent\u2019s insistence that she marry a man of \u2018good stock\u2019 forces her to walk a tightrope between traditional expectations and career. Her engagement to K\u00fanl\u00e9, 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\u2019s heart if she called the engagement off. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>A Spell of Good Things i<\/em>s 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\u2019s resilience within a staunchly traditional society where family obligations are foundational. Take, for example, W\u00faraol\u00e1\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Or Eniol\u00e1\u2019s mother, holding her own family together through sheer determination while her husband collapses under the weight of debilitating depression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">It is a brave writer who is willing to expose the ugly part of their country to the sunlight, and Ad\u00e9b\u00e1y\u00f2 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ay\u00f2b\u00e1mi Ad\u00e9b\u00e1y\u00f2 Canongate Otago Daily Times, 2023 Informed by her own experience, Ay\u00f2b\u00e1mi Ad\u00e9b\u00e1y\u00f2\u2019s booker-longlisted second novel unflinching exposes Nigeria\u2019s economic inequalities and political corruption, memorialising \u201c[the] many small tragedies that the collective consciousness can\u2019t process\u2026[that] just keep happening and falling away.\u201d Set at the start of the new millennium, the story is told from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[428,446,370,18],"class_list":["post-1606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-428","tag-ayobami-adebayo","tag-fiction","tag-odt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1607,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions\/1607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}