Good Reads / Community Library Notes
Stay With Me
Ayobami Adebayo
Review by Priscilla Comen
Stay With Me
Ayobami Adebayo
Review by Priscilla Comen
Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo is the story of Yejide and Akin who have been trying to have a baby for four years of their marriage. Both have gone for tests. One of their mothers (Akin’s father has three wives) decides a younger woman should come to live with them and get pregnant. Yejide is furious, jealous, and goes to a mountain top guru for help. The next month she feels she is pregnant. Her stomach swells, her breasts ache, she doesn’t get her period. But ultrasound shows no baby. She insists there is one. She’s a successful hair stylist and continues to work at her salon as the months go by.
Flashbacks show how Yejide and Akin meet at university, where they marched with other students. Some of them died for a better, non-corrupt government in Lagos. Later, after a drunken party, Yejide sleeps with Akin’s brother, likes the way he (Dotun) makes love to her, and then sleeps with Akin later that night. When she really gets pregnant, we wonder who the father is. After another party to name their new baby, Funima, Akin’s other wife, falls down a stairway and dies. She always wore ultra-high heeled shoes. Was this the reason for her death? Their precious baby dies. What is this run of bad luck?
Soon, a mello baby boy, Sesan, arrives, and a coup occurs in the government, promising democracy. Yejide’s darling son dies of sickle cell disease, and Yejide is devastated. So is Akin who had planned to play ball with him and teach him about the stars. Although Akin told his brother to make love to Yejide so she’d get pregnant, he’s furious when he finds them enjoying the love making. He beats Dotun until he ends up in hospital, seriously injured. Doctors find that Dotun carries the sickle cell gene, but Akin cannot have an erection. When Yejide has another baby, a girl, she names her “Stay With Me” (Rotimi) and prays that she will. Does she live to adulthood?
Author Adebayo weaves many folk tales into her story, giving the reader the flavor of the country. This sad but hopeful story of a family and their disease is set against the background of elections in Nigeria. Find this first novel of this talented young author on the new fiction shelf of the Mendocino Community Library.
Flashbacks show how Yejide and Akin meet at university, where they marched with other students. Some of them died for a better, non-corrupt government in Lagos. Later, after a drunken party, Yejide sleeps with Akin’s brother, likes the way he (Dotun) makes love to her, and then sleeps with Akin later that night. When she really gets pregnant, we wonder who the father is. After another party to name their new baby, Funima, Akin’s other wife, falls down a stairway and dies. She always wore ultra-high heeled shoes. Was this the reason for her death? Their precious baby dies. What is this run of bad luck?
Soon, a mello baby boy, Sesan, arrives, and a coup occurs in the government, promising democracy. Yejide’s darling son dies of sickle cell disease, and Yejide is devastated. So is Akin who had planned to play ball with him and teach him about the stars. Although Akin told his brother to make love to Yejide so she’d get pregnant, he’s furious when he finds them enjoying the love making. He beats Dotun until he ends up in hospital, seriously injured. Doctors find that Dotun carries the sickle cell gene, but Akin cannot have an erection. When Yejide has another baby, a girl, she names her “Stay With Me” (Rotimi) and prays that she will. Does she live to adulthood?
Author Adebayo weaves many folk tales into her story, giving the reader the flavor of the country. This sad but hopeful story of a family and their disease is set against the background of elections in Nigeria. Find this first novel of this talented young author on the new fiction shelf of the Mendocino Community Library.