SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Adjoa Andoh delivers a strong portrayal of this audiobook’s main characters, Yejide and Akin, an African couple entangled in cultural traditions they hope to share with their future children. Some of the traditions, however, challenge their growing family. Andoh clearly differentiates the characters by altering her tone and adding accents to her pronunciation at various times. She virtually becomes the elder mothers and other family members who impact the couple’s relationship. Andoh’s tone is sharp, especially when representing Yejide. The anguish in her voice during scenes of hardship is at times purposely overbearing to convey the depth of Yejide’s feelings as a mother and wife. This is a powerful novel that unfolds through Andoh’s superb characterizations of the protagonists. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
…[a] stunning debut…Stay With Me…has a remarkable emotional resonance and depth of field. It is, at once, a gothic parable about pride and betrayal; a thoroughly contemporary—and deeply moving—portrait of a marriage; and a novel, in the lineage of great works by Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, that explores the pull in Nigeria between tradition and modernity, old definitions of masculinity and femininity, and newer imperatives of self-definition and identity…Stay With Me fluently explores the interface between the personal and the political, and the precariousness of stability and safety in both realms…Stay With Me feels entirely fresh, thanks to its author's ability to map tangled familial relationships with nuance and precision, and her intimate understanding of her characters' yearnings, fears and self-delusions…Adebayo…is an exceptional storyteller. She writes not just with extraordinary grace but with genuine wisdom about love and loss and the possibility of redemption. She has written a powerfully magnetic and heartbreaking book.
Publishers Weekly
★ 06/12/2017
Adebayo explores the toll the intense pressure to have children exacts on one Nigerian couple across two decades. Akin’s large family disrupts his and Yejide’s happy but childless marriage by forcing him into a polygamous marriage without his wife’s knowledge. This betrayal and a last-ditch visit to a holy man convince Yejide that she is pregnant and she begins a year-long psychosomatic pregnancy. Just when she finally accepts that there will be no child, Akin’s brother Dotun seduces and impregnates her. The child is eagerly welcomed as Akin’s own, especially by his imposing mother. The happiness ends abruptly with the seemingly accidental death of Akin’s second wife. As subsequent traumas multiply between the couple, Adebayo slowly reveals their unspoken shame by having both narrate chapters covering the same events. Yejide’s strong ache to be a mother and her frustration with traditional Yoruba culture make her a complex character. Adebayo shows great promise in her debut novel. Her methodical exposure of her characters’ secrets forces the reader into continual reevaluations and culminates in a tender, satisfying conclusion. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
A New York Times Notable Book • One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Chicago Tribune, BuzzFeed, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Post, Southern Living, The Skimm
A BEA Buzz Panel Selection • A Belletrist Book-of-the-Month • A Sarah Jessica Parker Book Club Selection • Shortlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction • Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize and the 9mobile Prize for Literature • Longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize
“Powerfully magnetic. . . . In the lineage of great works by Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. . . . A thoroughly contemporary—and deeply moving—portrait of a marriage.” —The New York Times Book Review
“An absolute must-read and a story that will be shared for many decades to come.” —Emma Roberts, Refinery29
“[A] stunning literary work [that] serves as both astute political commentary and unfolding mystery.” —NPR
“Scorching, gripping, ultimately lovely.” —Margaret Atwood, Twitter
“Powerful storytelling. . . . The story is ancient, but Adebayo imbues it with a vibrant, contemporary spirit.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Wise and deeply humane. . . . A powerfully affecting tale of love, loyalty, and betrayal.” —Sarah Jessica Parker
“Stay With Me feels like a genre unto itself—a story that illustrates the necessity of hope and equality, but one that doesn’t water down the challenges of realizing them.” —Vogue
“A triumph—a complex, deeply felt exploration of love, marriage and family amid cultural and political upheaval.” —Chicago Tribune
“A debut that marks the beginning of what should be a stunning career.” —Goop
“Gorgeous. . . . Filled with big-hearted feelings and all kinds of female strength.” —Bustle
“[A] phenomenal novel. . . . Beautiful. . . . A layered story of love, sacrifice and hope . . . Adebayo’s debut is undoubtedly one of the best reads of this year.” —Essence
“A kind of addictive African soap opera, set against the political chaos of Nigeria in the 1980s.” —People
“A gut-wrenching tale of how wanting a child can wreck a woman, a marriage and a community. . . . Adebayo is surely a writer to watch.” —The Economist
“Forcefully affecting. . . . Adebayo’s compassionate chronicle of a fraught marriage speaks to broader national fears, making this family drama feel like an epic.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Heartbreaking. . . . A story of complicated love teetering between tradition and modernity.” —W Magazine
“A work of intimate yet powerful—and even, at times, shocking—storytelling that will . . . make your world bigger.” —Elle
“A bright, big-hearted demonstration of female spirit, as well as the damage done by the boundlessness of male pride.” —The Guardian
“With lyrical prose, Adebayo explores how far a woman will go to save her marriage.” —Real Simple
“Powerful.” —BuzzFeed
“A heartbreakingly beautiful story about love, marriage, and expectation.” —Southern Living
“Adebayo’s prose is a pleasure: immediate, unpretentious and flecked with whip-smart Nigerian-English dialogue.” —The Sunday Times (London)
Library Journal
★ 06/15/2017
Magazine editor and short story writer Adebayo gifts readers with an emotionally powerful first novel that relies less on literary artifice and more on old-fashioned storytelling. She plumbs the depths of the loving marriage of Akin and Yejide, a couple complete in themselves, until Akin's family sows division by excoriating Yejide for failing to produce children. When her beloved mother-in-law introduces a second wife to the household, Yejide's anguish results in a cruel psychosis, a phantom pregnancy. Akin, meanwhile, without telling his wife, devises a duplicitous solution to the parenthood problem that will cause insurmountable troubles down the road. In alternating he said/she said chapters, each character reveals the best and worst of humanity, a generosity of spirit offset by a penchant for vitriol. Set against a backdrop of political unrest, Adebayo's novel explores the rifts between generations and exposes the devastating effects of sickle-cell disease on a full quarter of Nigeria's population. VERDICT Recently short-listed for the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Adebayo's work makes a blazing entry onto the list of young, talented writers from Nigeria. Readers who pick up this debut novel will not put it down until they've finished. Talk it up. [See Prepub Alert, 2/13/17.]—Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Adjoa Andoh delivers a strong portrayal of this audiobook’s main characters, Yejide and Akin, an African couple entangled in cultural traditions they hope to share with their future children. Some of the traditions, however, challenge their growing family. Andoh clearly differentiates the characters by altering her tone and adding accents to her pronunciation at various times. She virtually becomes the elder mothers and other family members who impact the couple’s relationship. Andoh’s tone is sharp, especially when representing Yejide. The anguish in her voice during scenes of hardship is at times purposely overbearing to convey the depth of Yejide’s feelings as a mother and wife. This is a powerful novel that unfolds through Andoh’s superb characterizations of the protagonists. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2017-06-06
A couple struggles with fertility—and fidelity—as Nigeria falls apart around them.Yejide is furious when her husband, Akin, brings Funmi, a second wife, home to their house in Ilesa. Pressured by his mother, and by the constraints of Nigerian masculinity, to conceive a son, Akin seeks a solution to their marriage's childlessness—even if it means hurting Yejide in the process. In alternating chapters, Yejide and Akin tell a desperate story of hope and deceit, grief and forgiveness. "I simply had to get pregnant, as soon as possible, and before Funmi did," explains Yejide. "It was the only way I could be sure I would stay in Akin's life." Yejide's path to motherhood is marked by operatic tragedy, with the requisite affair and multiple deaths. Although Adebayo wields misfortune to shed light on the pressures of marriage, melodrama, at times, crowds out sympathy for the human-sized grief of her characters. Still, in the moments when Yejide confronts the fear and uncertainty of raising children with sickle cell anemia, Adebayo's writing shines. Set against a backdrop of student protests, a presidential assassination, and a military coup, Adebayo's novel captures how the turmoil of Nigerian life in the 1980s and '90s seeps into the most personal of decisions—to fight for, and protect, one's family. Adebayo's debut marks the emergence of a fine young writer.
