{"id":7829,"date":"2019-03-18T08:16:21","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T12:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7829"},"modified":"2019-03-18T08:16:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T12:16:30","slug":"stay-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7829","title":{"rendered":"****Stay with Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Ayobami Adelbayo \u2013 This superb debut novel is set in\nNigeria, starting in the 1980s\u2014a time of political upheaval following an\naborted election and resurgent military dictatorship. With that as a backdrop, it\nfocuses on the considerably smaller-scale politics within the household of a\nmarried couple, Yejide and Akin Ajayi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narrating mostly by Yejide, with occasional chapters from Akin,\nauthor Adelbayo presents an eloquent deconstruction of the social and family\npressures on the couple to have children\u2014a not-unusual problem that the author\nmanages to make distinctly fresh. Difficult solutions are proposed and\nundertaken that have profound consequences, forever altering Yejide and Akin\u2019s\nrelationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While that central problem remains intensely engaging, the\ndaily aspects of Yejide\u2019s life, running her hair salon, remembering her\nchildhood and its stories, and catering to relatives\u2019 demands and expectations\nare rendered in vivid detail. The result is a novel nominated for numerous\nprizes, one with \u201cremarkable emotional resonance and depth of field,\u201d says Michiko\nKakutani<\/a> in The New York Times.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adelbayo\u2019s prose is deceptively straightforward, carrying\nyou along easily, and you occasionally must stop yourself to reread a sentence\nor paragraph to fully appreciate its beauty or insight. An example is when Akin\ntalks about a breast-milk stain on his wife\u2019s blouse: \u201cAs I watched the milk\nstain spread downwards, I realised that the ground under our feet had just been\npulled away, we were standing on air, and my words could not keep us from\nfalling into the pit that had opened up beneath us.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t take long to read\u2014give it a try!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

photo: .craig on Visual Hunt, creative commons license<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By Ayobami Adelbayo \u2013 This superb debut novel is set in Nigeria, starting in the 1980s\u2014a time of political upheaval following an aborted election and resurgent military dictatorship. With that as a backdrop, it focuses on the considerably smaller-scale politics … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Stay with Me - award nominated novel about the pressures on a Nigerian couple to have children and the disastrous \"remedies\" they try.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[311,126],"tags":[433,1528,1530,1529],"class_list":["post-7829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-novel","category-reading-2","tag-africa","tag-ayobami-adelbayo","tag-nigeria","tag-stay-with-me"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/African-woman.jpg?fit=345%2C640&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-22h","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7829"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7831,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829\/revisions\/7831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}