The Thing Around Your Neck: A Partial Review
I am working on a review of Adichie's new book, The Thing Around Your Neck, which I just finished reading. So far I have posted a partial review on Moments in Literature, which focuses only on the last two stories of the book, and hints at my view of the other stories.
I enjoyed these stories (they occupied much of my weekend and I have no regrets). Simple little gems about life in America, in Nigeria,and other places. Each story will take you on a rewarding expedition; whether it is about a new housewife who joins her husband in America,where she discovers she loves a woman, an African American artist whose child she babysits; or the story of a young writer who attends an African Writers workshop in South Africa, funded by the British Council, where she discovers she cannot produce an acceptable story unless it meets the agenda of the sponsors; or a teenager at the Nsukka campus of the University of Nigeria where all the professors' sons are so bored by life there that they have taken to stealing their neigbors' televisions and jewelery, and as they grow older, forming cults which are as deadly as the gun-toting American gangs they see on TV; or a man who comes to a fellow Nigerian's apartment at Princeton to pray about the problems back home, forming a friendship with this female graduate student to whom he reveals that he is gay and he too broke up with his rich but arrogant boyfriend back in Nigeria; or all the other stories about immigrants whose dreams of big houses in America crumble when they see the reality of the work they have to do in order to afford an apartment, to get a job, an education, and then, perhaps, a big house one day, that is, after sending the much-needed money back home first,then maybe falling in love with an American, getting married; or the story of men (and women) who have to arrange false marriages with American citizens to get green cards.
A rich collection indeed, a wide range of themes which show that the best of Adichie is yet to come.
I enjoyed these stories (they occupied much of my weekend and I have no regrets). Simple little gems about life in America, in Nigeria,and other places. Each story will take you on a rewarding expedition; whether it is about a new housewife who joins her husband in America,where she discovers she loves a woman, an African American artist whose child she babysits; or the story of a young writer who attends an African Writers workshop in South Africa, funded by the British Council, where she discovers she cannot produce an acceptable story unless it meets the agenda of the sponsors; or a teenager at the Nsukka campus of the University of Nigeria where all the professors' sons are so bored by life there that they have taken to stealing their neigbors' televisions and jewelery, and as they grow older, forming cults which are as deadly as the gun-toting American gangs they see on TV; or a man who comes to a fellow Nigerian's apartment at Princeton to pray about the problems back home, forming a friendship with this female graduate student to whom he reveals that he is gay and he too broke up with his rich but arrogant boyfriend back in Nigeria; or all the other stories about immigrants whose dreams of big houses in America crumble when they see the reality of the work they have to do in order to afford an apartment, to get a job, an education, and then, perhaps, a big house one day, that is, after sending the much-needed money back home first,then maybe falling in love with an American, getting married; or the story of men (and women) who have to arrange false marriages with American citizens to get green cards.
A rich collection indeed, a wide range of themes which show that the best of Adichie is yet to come.
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