A Spell of Good Things
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023
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4.5 • 33 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2024
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023
A dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession and political corruption.
Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. His father has lost his job, so Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor and begging, dreaming of a big future.
Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of family friends.
When a local politician takes an interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola and Eniola's lives become unexpectedly intertwined. In this breathtaking novel, Ayobami Adebayo shines her light on Nigeria, the gaping divides in its society, and the shared humanity that lives in between.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this follow-up to Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s award-winning debut novel Stay with Me, political corruption, poverty and precarity are writ powerfully small, their impact on individual lives in contemporary Nigeria—and the way they force people's hands—always front and centre. Her characters’ experiences, their particular desperations and the dangers they face, are largely defined by their economic positions. Schoolboy Ẹniọlá’s family has hit hard times, the kind that mean they risk losing themselves and each other, while overworked trainee doctor Wúràọlá and her family don’t have the same worries. However, the push-pull of their own desires and the duties they feel to each other, the knowledge that good fortune can always run out, and the possibility that Wúràọlá’s seemingly loving partner may not always be so loving, play on their minds. As the lives of the more and less fortunate are tangled together, Adébáyọ̀ does something masterful: she makes the book’s climax feel heart-rending, inevitable and surprising all at once.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Adébáyọ̀ follows up Stay with Me with this bright and distinctive tragedy set in modern Nigeria. Ẹniọlá, a teenager whose father has lost his job, can no longer pay the tuition at the private school that he'd hoped would enable him to rise from poverty. Wúràọlá is a doctor from a wealthy and politically connected family. She's overworked in an underfunded hospital, and courted by well-bred Kúnlé, whose mood shifts and possessiveness unnerve her. Ẹniọlá takes an apprenticeship with a tailor, but after he is beaten at school for the unpaid fees, his mother insists Ẹniọlá and his little sister accompany her to beg for money. Things spiral out of control when Ẹniọlá's parents decide to pay his sister's tuition with the proceeds but not his. He takes his revenge by joining a gang working for the vengeful politician Fẹ̀sọ̀jaiyé. Wúràọlá, meanwhile, becomes engaged to Kúnlé despite her misgivings, and though her parents are ecstatic, he slaps her at a party. Kúnlé's father is running against Fẹ̀sọ̀jaiyé, and the story's violent denouement is as devastating as it is inevitable. Pitch-perfect details provide a sense of the characters' lives—the red dust caked on Ẹniọlá's white socks from long walks to school, the soft headscarf worn by Wúràọlá's mother that "barely whispered"—and as the characters are pushed to the brink, Adébáyọ̀ delivers a searing indictment of the country's corruption and gender inequalities. This packs a powerful punch.
