With her usual lucidity and in a lilting yet plain-spoken style, Emecheta ( Head Above Water ) tells of a woman's search for independence. Albert and Kehinde Okolo have been living in London for 18 years when Albert's sisters begin pressuring him to return to Nigeria. Kehinde resists the idea: their two children have never been to Nigeria and she has recently learned that she is pregnant. At Albert's insistence she has an abortion. Albert then leaves, and Kehinde remains behind to sell the house. After Albert sends for the children, Kehinde is lonely at first but manages on her own. Eventually, she begins to feel like a ``half-person'' without Albert, gives up her job and departs for Nigeria. On her arrival, she is horrified to learn that, during their two-year separation, Albert has taken a second wife. Kehinde decides to return to England and establish a life for herself there. Kehinde's troubled relationship to Albert and her children are parallelled in her recollections of a difficult childhood: Kehinde's twin was stillborn and her mother died at birth, prompting the family to believe that she had eaten her sister. It's a story that she at first accepts, but as she becomes her own woman she rejects its superstitious quality.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
An Anglo-Nigerian with a large British following, Emecheta has written over ten novels (The Family, LJ 3/1/90), a number of juvenile works, teleplays, and an autobiography, Head Above Water (Kayode, 1991). In many of these works, she clearly portrays the sociological and personal difficulties of welfare mothers in London, drawing heavily on her own personal experience. Here, Kehinde and Albert Okolo have been living in London as a married couple for 18 years when Albert returns to Nigeria, under pressure from his family. After two years of struggling alone in London, Kehinde returns to Nigeria to discover that Albert has taken a second wife, despite promises of monogamy when they were first married. Unable to adjust to the new family situation, she returns to London and begins a new life for herself. Kehinde's outer show of independence is mirrored by her inner life; she becomes strong enough to quiet the voice of her stillborn twin, who has spoken to her and influenced her actions throughout her life. A good addition to most collections, especially those offering pan-African materials.-Marie F. Jones, Muskingum Coll. Lib., New Concord, Ohio.
After living in London for many years, Kehinde's husband Albert decides that they will return to Nigeria. He strongly urges her to abort the baby she is carrying, and she does so with great apprehension. He takes their two children and leaves her to sell the house and tie up loose ends at her prestigious bank job. He then returns to their homeland, where he takes a new young wife and has a child by her. When Kehinde arrives in Nigeria and discovers the truth, she is pressured by her own and Albert's female relatives to play the role of the subservient wife. Her sense of reason wins out, and readers will applaud her decisions at the end of this short, honest novel.-- (Ginny Ryder, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA)
After almost twenty years living in London, Albert Okolos is forcing his wife, Kehinde, to return to their native land, Nigeria. Albert is tired of the democratic nature of London, "Stupid country, where you need your wife's money to make ends meet." He longs for the status and prosperity he will obtain
in Nigeria and is determined to move his family back to the "home" neither he nor Kehinde remembers clearly and their two children know not at all. "After eighteen years, he pined for sunshine, freedom, easy friendship, warmth. He wanted to go home to show off his new life style, his material success."Kehinde begins a journey of self-discovery when she leaves
her successful career and her London home to follow Albert to Nigeria, where he has been for a year. She arrives to find that she has been relegated to a marginal position in his life, that he has taken a second wife who is already pregnant by him. Kehinde must pull herself and her life together and learn about indepen-
dence and strength from the least likely of sources _herself.
Like Kehinde, Emecheta was born in Nigeria. At seventeen, she married, had a child, and moved with her husband to London. At twenty-two, she left him and finished a sociology degree while supporting her five children. Part fiction, part autobiography, Kehinde is a clever and insightful story about family, country, roles, and responsibility that clearly illustrates how things are rarely valued until they are lost.
