House Woman

by Adorah Nworah

Overview

"Twisted and intense, this marvelous debut novel transforms from a domestic drama into a story of secrecy and survival you can’t put down." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

When Ikemefuna is put on a plane from Lagos to Texas, she anticipates her newly arranged All-American life: a handsome husband, a beautiful red-brick mansion in Sugar Land, pizza parlors, and dance classes. 

Desperate to please, she’ll happily cater to her family’s needs. But Ikemefuna soon discovers what it actually means to live with her in-laws. Demands for a grandson grow urgent, her every move comes under scrutiny, and the America she imagined from Nigeria shimmers almost as distantly through the locked windows of the Sugar Land house, unattainable. As Ikemefuna finds there’s no way out, her new husband Nna, a corporate attorney, grapples with the influence of his parents against his own increasing affection for her, juggling their deeply traditional expectations with his own. 

As family secrets boil to the surface, Ikemefuna must decide how to scrape herself out of an impossibly sticky situation: a marriage succumbing to generational cycles of pain and silence. In the end, she may be carrying the greatest secret of all. An unforgettably delicious thriller, House Woman is about a woman trapped in a dangerous web of conflicting desires, melting in the Texas heat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951213565
Publisher:	The Unnamed Press
Publication date:	06/06/2023
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.05(d)

About the Author

Adorah Nworah is an Igbo writer from South-East Nigeria. Her stories have been published in AFREADA and adda magazine. Her short stories, "The Bride and Broken English" made the shortlist for the 2019 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize and the longlist for the 2018 Short Story Day Africa Prize respectively. She lives in Philadelphia, where she practices real estate finance law and is cat mom to her handsome Napoleon cat.

Editorial Reviews

"Adorah Nworah has written a deeply immersive and wrenching study of the life of a young woman in an arranged marriage and the thorny paths she must navigate in her quest for freedom. This debut shines with a brilliance that will run through you clean as an arrow. I’ve yet to read a story so gutting, yet tender and thoughtful in its handling of such an important subject.” —Ukamaka Olisakwe, author of Ogadinma

"To read House Woman is to encounter characters that are alive in their desires. They want what they want and they want it now. Nworah's debut is full of twists and sentences that will stun you. A book rich in surprises." —Kemi Falodun, writer, journalist, and author of Soundbenders: The Many Lives of Beautiful Nubia

"An unflinching, unforgettable slow-burn thriller, House Woman reveals searing truths about women’s bodily autonomy and the hidden Gothic horrors of marriage while refusing to provide any simple answers—and the novel is all the more satisfying for it. Adorah Nworah is a stunning literary talent, and her debut will enthrall you, incense you, and haunt you forever." —Layne Fargo, author of They Never Learn

"Deliciously sinister, House Woman engulfs in slow, insidious waves. This novel is compellingly paced and alive with searing detail. Though woven through familiar elements of Nigerian diasporic literature, Nworah's prose quickly, provocatively subverts expectations. With characters who are flawed as flesh and a plot that twists and snatches from one terrifying brink to another, House Woman is fresh and thoroughly enjoyable. I'm just jealous that I didn't write it!" —Francesca Ekwuyasi, Author of Butter Honey Pig Bread

From the Publisher

2023-03-28
A young Nigerian American man is offered a “wife” against her will in this domestic thriller.

A successful lawyer in Philadelphia, Nnaemeka returns to Texas to visit his parents and finds a strange woman in the kitchen. He's immediately attracted to her “musical” voice, her shape, her cooking—and doesn’t care much about her story. To him, Ikemefuna is “simplicity itself.” Their parents knew each other in Lagos many years ago, and now she has come to America to be his wife. As the novel offers different perspectives from chapter to chapter, switching not only between Nna and Ikemefuna, but also their mothers and the next-door neighbor, it is quickly revealed that this is not just an arranged marriage story. Ikemefuna seems trapped in the house; Nna’s parents have taken (and eaten) her passport. They force her to cook, to please and obey all of them, and to sleep with Nna so that she might become pregnant as soon as possible. Nna refuses to believe what she tells him about his parents, and soon he, too, is part of the abuse. The novel teems with menace, and at a time when Black horror is thriving in Hollywood, there are early hints that there might be supernatural elements to the conflict. Ikemefuna sometimes blacks out and commits acts of violence, and then there is the strange fact that Nna looks eerily like her mother. There is no escaping, however, the real truth at the heart of the horror: This is a novel about crime, crimes committed in the name of male supremacy. It is even more so, though, a novel that interrogates the American dream and the idea that leaving home truly allows one greater opportunity to thrive. It’s about how the sins of the past cannot be outrun and how everyone has a breaking point.

A modern successor to Gaslight: disorienting and disturbing.

Kirkus Reviews