Stay With Me

A very different book for me. So much tragedy, angst and lies. Well written and a good story but very difficult to understand in parts. The ending is so abrupt, after all that has happened in the story, there are many unanswered questions.

This book is miles away from what I normally read, but I'm really glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to read it. It's so heartbreaking, but also so real. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who may be interested.

The story is woven in flashback mode and very engrossing. The interactions between the characters and highlighting the challenges of impotency and at the same time, children with Sickle Cell disease is intriguing.

This highlights the reason people check their genotype before marriage to reduce the incidence of SCD. But what do you do when the magic occurs....

The book jumped around a lot and in some chapters left you confused as to who was talking (husband or wife) as well as some of the events in the book were confusing (I.e.: didn’t the husband’s father die in earlier chapter... who’s funeral is she talking about: her father or his father...)

A well developed portrayal of the juxtaposition of traditional mores with 21st century life style against
the background of political unrest, with the harsh realities and consequences of patriarchy in the foreground

Stay With Me, Ayobami Adebayo

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews
Genre: Literary Fiction, General Fiction (Adult) 
 
This isn’t a book I’d re-read, that being said it was heart breaking at times. A really sad story where it was difficult to see who was really acting in the wrong.

Yejide was so in love with Akim, having been brought up in a typical Nigerian family where her father had four wives, and respect for parents is huge. Sadly her mother died in childbirth, and there are so many religious superstitions over any event connected with death that she’s always on the outside of the family, always being reminded of the awful thing her mother did in dying. When she meets Akin she’s ripe for love. When he sees her he’s entranced and very soon they are married.

That’s seems fine doesn’t it? Sadly though family is everything in this culture and Yejide is soon inundated with advice from Akim’s and her own family about how to get pregnant.
At first they seem like an independent couple, they know much of this “advice” is spurious superstition but slowly the blame weighs heavily on Yejide.
She’s still shocked though when Akim takes a second wife....my heart broke for her here. I was so angry at Akim and yet in that culture, with the constant pressure of parents, not just two but all his fathers wives who want to see their son or daughter as the favoured, its harder to blame him.
I really didn’t like Funmi, wife number two, and yet if I’m honest she was just doing what their culture taught, marry and have children, seek to ensure your children are in the favoured position of their father.

There’s such sadness here, and I so felt for both of them. Some really strange things too, when with a Western eye and education I’m thinking “oh come on, they wouldn’t do/would have known/ought to have”...and yet events carry on playing out, binding them all deeper and deeper, potentially losing that precious love they had.

Later in the story I really was cross at Yejide and her behaviour, didn’t understand how she could act like that to an innocent child, and yet I also understood her too. My first child was stillborn and I spent hours watching over the three that followed, prodding them awake when I was sure that they weren’t breathing.
Heartbreak, death, despair all does strange things and in a way she was just trying to protect herself.

I could have been angry too at the interfering parents, their intervention caused such tragedy, and yet once more its a culture thing, they weren’t intentionally cruel, just wanted what they’d been taught was best for their children, for their happiness, for their fulfilment.

Its a really sad story, but with an ending that hints at a positive future.
I really enjoyed it, it makes for a terrific debut read but its not one I’d re-read now I know how it plays out. I did like seeing things from both Yejide and Akim’s view points. Gave me a real insight into their feelings. 

Stars: Five, a fabulous debut, full of the way a different culture sees parenthood, and the problems it brings when a wife fails to get pregnant.

ARC supplied for review purposes by Netgalley and Publishers

When I first started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. Reading about the marriage culture in Nigeria was so foreign to me. It is common for husbands to have multiple wives. Akin and Yejide meet in college, fall in love and get married. Both agree that multiple wives are not needed for their marriage.

Yet, the years go by and Yejide fails to conceive a child. In their culture, this is all the woman's fault. What???? It is hard to believe in this day and age that such opinions are out there. Yejide has to put up with a meddling mother-in-law. Like some other reviewers, I kept thinking to myself, "why can't Yejide just tell her mother-in-law to shut it!" Obviously, I come from a very different culture.

This book explores the ebbs and flows of marriage. This cuts across all cultures, even if the details may be different.

The book takes a very unexpected turn at the end.

I gave this book only 3 stars because I didn't care for all the graphic descriptions of sex etc. later in the book. Call me a prude, but somethings are better left unsaid.

Vivid animated dialogue made this a wonderful reading experience. The characters include Yejide, who is desperate to become pregnant, and her husband Akin,who is successful in business but is unable to give his wife what she wants most. The superstitions of Nigeria society play out in this book since a childless woman is seen as a tragedy and when Akin's mother coerces him to take a second wife in an effort to have a grandchild, the family dynamics take a tragic turn.with the introduction of Akin's married brother, Dotun.

All throughout, the political and social chaos of 1980s Nigeria is set forth brilliantly. I look forward to reading more by this author.

“Stay With Me” starts out strong. Yejide and Akin are Nigerian, young, in love and newly married. There is an immense amount of family pressure on them to have a child but Yejide is unable to get pregnant. She even goes so far as to climb the Mountain of Jaw-Dropping Miracles, where she is part of a ceremony with a goat and is guaranteed she will become pregnant.

Both families constantly interfere. At one point, Yejide even talks herself into being pregnant. But after 4 years of marriage and no baby Akin does the unthinkable, and takes a second wife. “I was barren and my husband took another wife.” Things go rapidly downhill from there – both in the marriage and in the quality of the novel.

Yejide runs a beauty salon and Akin is a successful banker and they are financially successful. Yejide does ultimately become pregnant, three times, but there are significant costs associated with those pregnancies. The book is told in part from Yejide’s perspective and in part from Akin’s perspective. After all is said and done, both Akin and Yejide question the sacrifices they made in order to have children. “I no longer believed that having a child was equal to owning the world.”

The novel devolves into a horror story. The characters are miserable, their deceptions are diabolical and everyone (especially the reader) suffers. Throughout the novel there are interesting interludes about the political climate in Nigeria, but these interludes are simply not enough to offset the misery of the story and the torment that is the characters’ lives. The novel was short listed for the Bailey’s Prize, so obviously not everyone agrees with me. On the plus side, the novel is blessedly short.

“You can never cover the truth. Just as nobody can cover the sun’s rays with his hands, you can never cover the truth.”

Stay With Me is about want. It’s about a want so big that it fills you up until you crack, forces you to push and then pass the boundaries of truth, reason, and morality. It’s about secrets, lies and manipulations, but also marriage, trust, hope, and second chances. It’s about people who do things they never thought they could, never thought they would, in hopes that the end will justify the means. It’s about just how far two people will go, what they will do to themselves and to each other, in the hopes of having a child. I can easily see why this book has bowled so many people over. I want so badly to do this book justice with my review, but it’s truly difficult. I worry that I’m making it sound so dark and sad, but know there is hope and beauty here too!

“But I think I did believe that love had immense power to unearth all that was good in us, refine us and reveal to us the better versions of ourselves.”

How It All Stacked Up:
4.5 stars
Stay with me rocked me to my core. As a mama, as a wife, as a human being. I read it in just a few sittings this past weekend, and although it isn’t an incredibly long novel, it packs a huge emotional punch. It’s heavy, but it’s also redemptive and so hopeful. Highly recommended.

"Stay With Me", Ayobami Adebayo's debut novel, was shortlisted for the 'Women's Prize for Fiction' - one of Britain's most prestigious literary awards. The honor is well-deserved.

*****

All cultures expect the younger generation to have children, a biological imperative to ensure that the group doesn't die out. In some societies the 'elders' just pester their kids.....I wanna be a grandma already! In other groups, the pressure to reproduce is intense and relentless, and childless couples are berated and shamed. That's the case for the protagonists in this story - Akin Ajayi and his wife Yejide - a Yoruba couple in Nigeria.

Akin and Yejide are well-educated, middle-class residents of Ilesa, a city in the southwest part of the country. Akin is an accountant and Yejide owns a beauty salon, and the couple have a nice home and a close, loving relationship. The Yoruba people are polygamous, but Yejide is Akin's only wife - a pre-condition for her agreeing to marry him.

Unfortunately the Ajayis are childless after four years of marriage, and their relatives - especially Yejide's mother-in-law - are constantly begging and manipulating Akin to take another wife.....one who will produce kids. Yejide is 'blamed' for the couple's barrenness, though she's been to doctors who said she was fine. Akin also reports that physicians found him sound. Under scrutiny from her entire community, Yejide has tried everything to conceive: prayers, herbs, physicians, rituals, pilgrimages, and so on - to no avail.

One day Akin's mother shows up at her oldest son's home with a pretty young woman named Funmi, and introduces her to Yejide as Akin's second wife. It seems that Akin married Funmi in secret, after years of harassment by his mother. Yejide is shocked. (What a rotter that Akin is!)

Feeling devastated, Yejide decides she MUST get pregnant to preserve her place in the family. As a last resort, Yejide hauls a goat up the 'Mountain of Jaw-Dropping Miracles' where 'Prophet Josiah' leads her through an exotic ritual that includes suckling the goat. Yejide is convinced a miracle HAS occurred and that she's now pregnant. Akin doubts his wife, but Yejide proceeds to take antenatal classes and to prepare a room for the baby. Sonograms at various doctors' offices show no baby, but Yejide insists they're all mistaken. Long story short.....no baby is born.

Through all this, Funmi - who's been installed in her own apartment - is trying to insinuate herself into the Ajayi home, so she can assume the role of a 'true wife.' This, of course, just exacerbates Yejide's frustration and anger.

For his part, Akin wants Yejide to be happy, and would do almost anything to ensure her fulfillment. This leads to the subsequent events in the novel - some happy, some sad, some tragic.

The story is narrated by Akin and Yejide in alternating sections, and we hear how they met, fell in love at first sight, and wed soon afterwards. We also learn that Yejide's mother died giving birth to her, and that her father's other wives were dismissive, cold, insulting, and hurtful. Thus, young Yejide grew up lonely and isolated, and she desperately wants a 'real family' now. Perhaps because of this, Yejide shuts her eyes to obvious deceptions and lies. Yejide's level of denial (and naiveté ?) seems COMPLETELY unbelievable (to me), but may be related to her yearning for a child and her cultural roots.

The story spans several decades, from the 1980s through 2008, during which Nigeria was undergoing repeated political upheavals and changes. For the most part, the characters seem to take this in stride.....just another day in the home country. At one point, however, a violent incident has an indirect (but profound) effect on the Ajayis lives.

Other important characters in the novel include: Dotun - Akin's younger brother, a married philanderer who loves and respects his sibling; and Iya Bolu - a fellow salon owner who becomes Yejide's best friend. There are also appearances by Yejide's father and father-in-law; several stepmothers; and even a bunch of robbers - who send notices of their upcoming burglaries (can you believe this??).

In the course of the story, the author provides peeks at the Yoruba culture, including their culinary tastes (pounded yams are a favorite); celebrations (newborns garner joyous naming ceremonies); funerals (elaborate and expensive); and other traditions - including some folktales. This is fascinating and enlightening.

I very much liked this well-written and engaging book. For me, Yejide is an admirable character, strong-willed and resilient. As for Akin... I didn't like him much, but I do understand the cultural and familial pressures put on him. Stories centered around paternalistic cultures - which have dismissive and condescending attitudes to women - always raise my blood pressure. But I know the world isn't going to change just because I want it to. LOL

I'd highly recommend "Stay With Me" to fans of literary novels.

One of the most exciting recent developments in publishing has been the mainstream publication of fiction by African authors, many of them young people. It can be easy for Americans to settle into a pattern of reading only American and British fiction, but these new voices from Africa can be a vivid call to readers not only to immerse themselves in a different culture but also to recognize in these narratives the universality of human experience.

One of these new voices from Africa is author Ayobami Adebayo, whose debut novel, STAY WITH ME, has been deservedly shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. The book traces the misfortunes of a married couple --- Yejide and Akin --- over the course of more than 25 years, from the early 1980s until 2008.

The two meet as students at university and instantly fall in love. They vow to have a more modern marriage than their own parents’ polygamy. They are well-educated, politically engaged and ambitious --- they don’t need to fall into the traditional roles of their parents’ generation. Yejide, in particular, whose own mother died in childbirth and who was consequently raised by her dismissive stepmothers, fears what polygamy might do not only to her relationship with Akin but also to any children born into the family.

But when years pass after their marriage and Yejide is still not pregnant, the couple’s older relatives begin to exert increasing pressure on Akin to accept another wife, one who can give him a son. Yejide rails against this idea, but eventually the family wins out, and Akin marries another woman, Funmi, whom he puts up at an apartment on the other side of town.

Yejide, who owns her own hair salon, and Akin, who works as a bank manager, are solidly middle class, eager to embrace modernity and reject many of the superstitious beliefs that used to govern decisions. But Yejide, increasingly desperate to get pregnant before Funmi and consequently cement her status in the family and Akin’s bond with her, engages in a mystical rite that involves ecstatic dancing and chanting, not to mention suckling a goat.

And that’s just the beginning of the extreme steps that both Yejide and Akin take to ensure the birth of a healthy child and to attempt to maintain their bonds with one another. Things quickly go from bad to worse, and miscommunication, betrayals and misguided attempts at solutions result in repeated tragedy. Meanwhile, this domestic drama is playing out against the backdrop of a country that also seems fated to repeat the same self-destructive patterns, with repeated coups and state violence characterizing daily life.

STAY WITH ME is surprisingly fast-moving. Combined with Adebayo’s remarkably unsentimental prose and the alternating narrative viewpoints, it might be easy to miss key details if it’s read too quickly. But everything is important in this slender yet powerful novel, and readers will find themselves deeply invested in the prospects for Yejide and Akin’s marriage and family. Coming on the heels of so much heartbreak, the ending feels particularly satisfying, and readers, like Yejide herself, will come away from the book brimming over with hard-won hope.

Reviewed by Norah Piehl

Love and honesty take a back seat to pride, honor and family obligation in this emotionally charged novel about an otherwise successful, well-educated young married couple from Nigeria. Having met and fallen in love at their Nigerian university, Sejide and Akin seem to have it all -- she manages her own hair salon and he is a loan officer at a bank. Although there are political uprisings in their beloved country, their life together seems on stable ground, until they face a gut-wrenching dilemma. They are unable to conceive a child, and in Nigerian culture, that means a wife is an abject failure. Akin faces unrelenting pressure, especially from his own dominant mother, to take a second wife to ensure that a child is born. Sejide finds herself alone in this untenable situation, without any other trusted older woman to advise her, since her own mother died giving birth to her, and her father's other wives always made her feel like an outcast.

The plot line takes some twists and turns and occasionally gets a little tangled as the first-person narration sometimes changes from chapter to chapter, giving the reader pause to determine whose perspective is now telling the story. And the unquestioning acceptance of the complicated family and social mores of the fully-ingrained polygamous culture of Nigerian life feels foreign indeed to the contemporary American reader. But the sense of failure felt by both husband and wife at being unable to conceive a child can be understood across all cultural lines. I only wish the ending of the story had been a bit stronger. I saw it coming a mile away. But it was still a decent read.

I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting to me to be ablr to look at the different cultural differences when a family is infertile. The couple were married for four years and still had not conceived, even though they had tried some very odd things to try to get pregnant. There was outside pressure from the man's family (specifically his mother) to take another wife in order to bring children into the marriage.
The book gets really interesting at this point. The couple had agreed not to participate in polygamy but pressures bring about other events.
I think this book is well worth your time. Read it and be entertained and informed.
Personally I will be watching and looking for other books by this writer.

While the premise of this book is interesting, I had issues with its plausibility and the two dimensionality of the characters. Yejide and Akin meet while in college and appear to be deeply in love. Despite the cultural norms of Nigeria, where multiple wives are common, Yejide and Akin agree that neither of them want anyone else in their relationship. As four years go by and they still have no children, Akin's mother intervenes and presents another wife to Akin. Yejide is appalled when Akin does not refuse to add another wife to their family.

Najide runs a beauty salon and Akin is a bank employee. They are doing well financially but they are beginning to drift further and further apart under the pressure from Akin's family that Najide bear a child. Najide goes so far as to tell everyone she is pregnant when she is not. As her "pregnancy" progresses past nine months and two doctors tell her there is no child in her womb, she refuses to believe that she will not bear a child.

I never got a full sense of who Akin and Yejide were as people in their own right. I found some of the political history of Nigeria interesting but it was just background information to the main narrative. The story lacked the richness and layers that I look for in literary fiction.

In sparse but always engaging prose, this wonderful debut hooks you right at the beginning, and it never lets you go until the final page. Yejide is dying to get pregnant and in the four years she has been married to Akin, they have been unsuccessful in making it happen. As Yourubas in Nigerian the pressure to have children is great. The pressure on Yejide coming from Akin's family borders on extreme. So, the first of many unwraps comes early in the novel. Akin at the urging of his mother takes on a second wife, despite the fact that Akin and Yejide eschewed the practice of polygamy, vowing not to make it apart of their union.

So Ms. Adebayo has put the reader front and center into the marriage of Akin and Yejide which is in full crumble mode. The novel starts in the present time of 2008 then, she takes us back to their initial meeting and works back to the present to show how we got to a collapsed marriage. She uses Akin and Yejide as alternate narrators to give the readers a balanced look as how the perspective of the marriage failing looks from each party. The heart of this novel clearly is love, and how it looks from various perspectives. As Adebayo works through the various themes in the novel and offers up timely reveals, you will be onboard as an emotionally invested reader supporting Adebayo while trying to wrap your head around Akin's solutions to having children. Adebayo is very convincing in her narrative and storytelling, making the reader a believer and fan page after page. I want to tell you some more about the trials of their marriage but to do so would ruin the pleasant pop-ups that come from reading a great novel. This one will be on 2017 best books of the year. At turns funny, gut wrenching, sobering and thoughtful. A home run. Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Publishing Group for providing an advanced ebook in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Stay with Me is set in Nigeria, spanning the years of a couple, Yejide, and Akin, from college in the eighties up to 2008, the later years of their marriage. Yejide and Akin fall in love instantly and that love takes precedence over long held cultural mores such as polygamy. Yejide is beautiful and agrees to marry Akin even though she has not completed her college degree. Akin becomes a very successful banker. Yejide loves to braid hair and eventually opens her salon. She is happy with this life.

First, the marriage is as perfect as their love is intense. After a few years when Yejide is still not pregnant, the extended family steps in and the pressure for Akin to take another wife becomes powerful and all consuming. Eventually, Akin and Yejide agree to a second wife, but one who will live separately and serve only as a conduit to children in the marriage.

Simultaneously, Nigeria is going through the throes of political upheaval that builds, over the years, to violent demonstrations.

The marriage suffers drastically, and it seems that nothing can save it. The heartache of watching these two young people suffer is a compelling narrative. As a reader pulled into their lives, I had to know if they would make it. How could they possibly recover from all the sadness?

Ayobami Adebayo weaves a rich story of love, family, culture, and country with examples of Nigerian songs, fables, stories, and love. I learned about a country I have never visited through her words. Stay with Me is a seriously compelling debut novel. I am sure this book will propel the author into the literary world with a secure place in the ranks of literary fiction.

I am a great fan of Nigerian literature -- and there's certainly a renaissance of it now. In addition to the obvious (Chimanda Ngozi Adichie and Teju Cole), I've loved the works of Helen Oyeyemi, Cinelo Okparanta, A. Igoni Barrett and Helon Habila, among others. So I was primed to really love this novel, which is already the recipient of much advance buzz.

I didn't. I thought that (as another reviewer puts it) that the characters were flat and the cliched -- interfering mother-in-law, high-powered yet submissive wife, and so forth. Most readers seem to love the book so maybe the problem lies with the reader, not the writer. Pick it up and judge for yourself.

“Anger is easier than shame.”

Ayobami Adebayo’s debut novel Stay With Me is stunning. Yejide and Akin are a young married Yoruba couple living in Ilesa, a southwestern town in Nigeria. Although the two are madly in love, their failed attempts to have a baby bring them to a catastrophic head against a rigid traditional society. Yejide is smart, enterprising, charming, and confident. It is impossible not to feel for her even as she ventures into ever stranger terrain in her efforts to conceive.

Contrary to her strong outspoken adult persona, Yejide grew up lonely and vulnerable. Her mother died in childbirth, and her father was scant protection against his other wives and their children: “In our polygamous home, eavesdropping was not just rude, it was criminal.” When she marries Akin, the oppressive power of her husband’s family combine with her lack of a support network to create a perfect storm. Add in personality, patriarchy, gender bias, polygamous family values, a failed state, witchcraft, medical crises, jealousy, and depression, and you have an intimate, intense, psychologically complex, and page-turning drama. 

When the point of view shifts from Yejide to Akin, it fills out a deep and complex marital relationship with frustratingly real and damning communication flaws. It’s difficult to show two conflicting perspectives without throwing one of them under the bus, but Adebayo manages it with understated grace. For example, how true this passage rings: “Our relationship was still at the point where it didn’t matter who was wrong or right. We hadn’t arrived at the place where deciding who needed to apologize started another fight.”

As per my propensity towards language, I was taken by the gliding gripping prose as well as the Yoruba phrases and proverbs woven into the text throughout the novel: “when I was a little child, before my right hand was long enough to touch my left ear…” It’s the way a strange and particular story becomes something universal and haunting. Stay With Me was both a pleasure to read and deeply compelling. Adebayo was only 29 when this book was published. One can only imagine where she will go next, but it’s going to be good. 

Yejide and Akin fell in love at a political event while at University and married. They are young, upper-middle class, educated professionals with one foot in the future and one firmly rooted in their traditional Yoruba culture. They've been married for four years with no children, so to remedy this, in walks Akin's mother and the extended female family for what has become a regular visit to discuss this personal matter which is taken on by the larger community. This time, however, they brought a pretty young woman with them - a stranger. It seems that since Yejide can't or won't bear a child (preferably a son,) it's time to add a wife to the household, and she's here now.

Yejide at first assumes this is impossible. She and Akin had discussed their modern view of monogamous marriage. Before long, though, it becomes clear that Akin has assented to his mother's wishes for new woman entering their lives. Yejide is beyond distraught. As Nigeria is ripped apart by political lies, unkept promises, and things that look different than they seem, so is the marriage. Against a backdrop of political unrest, we watch a marriage go through its own similar upheaval.

The outside pressure brought to bear on both the individuals and the marriage lead both to multiple extremes. Nobody is a hero here. Everyone is supremely human and flawed, each with his or her own rationale for acting the way they do. Nonetheless, love cannot win out when truth falls victim to perception. Akin wants to be perceived as virile. Akin's mother wants that too. Yejide wants desperately to be loved, but when that seems impossible, she throws away nearly everything.

Something that has cropped up repeatedly for me over the past few years is the way machismo is enforced by women -- be it in fiction or in reality. Akin's mother is a perfect example of this. She wants certain esteem, and her son is the way to get that -- who cares about this woman he loves?

There is an intricate dance done in the writing where things happen and we only find out the hows and whys later. The balancing act of a disintegrating family within a disintegrating society is nimbly handled. Adebayo covers the family's struggles and torments with a skillful style that takes them from the personal to the universal.

I kept seeing this book all over Booktube and saw it up for the Baileys Prize, so I knew I had to read it. Right after I did buy it though, I was approved on NetGalley to review it. Go figure.
I absolutely adored this book. One of my favorites of the year.
I will say at one point, around the half way mark I had to put it down, as it really hit home with me as a mother.
The book certainly made me think about what it would be like if one day my husband told me he would be marrying another, about being a mother, and a family unit in general.
I would highly recommend this book to all. I look forward to more novels written by Ayobami Adebayo.

I received a copy of this book through Netgalley for an honest opinion. I would like to thank Ayobami Adebayo and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the opportunity to read and review this beautiful book.

Stay With Me
“Stay With Me” is a fine example of a story which takes one cultural premise and explores its consequences for a particular group of people. Set in Nigeria, the two protagonists are a married couple who have not been able to conceive. The Nigerian cultural premise is that barrenness is the fault of the wife, and the husband may resort to a second wife in order to ensure the family bloodline.

Once the premise has been established, the Nigerian setting is not a major factor in “Stay With Me”, although there are occasional references to coups and protests going on in the background of the story. The point of view alternates between the innocent wife Yijede and her husband Akin, and as neither is entirely reliable as a narrator, they conjure up enough mayhem and misunderstanding between them to create a mystery which drives the tale.

Adebayo is a smooth writer and her characters are believable (though one reader complained that Yijede is too innocent to be true.) A good quick read.

Stay With Me is Ayobami Adebayo's debut novel about a marriage between two people in Nigeria, a marriage based on lies and the deepest desire to have children in a culture where bearing children is put above loyalty in a marriage.

When I read the summary for Stay With Me, I knew it was going to be an emotional story but I had no idea the scope of heartache I would feel throughout my reading. My heart hurt in equal parts for Yejide, who wants nothing more than to bear a child of her own and for her husband Akin, who's infertility causes such self destruction its almost hard to read with each turn of the page. They both desire the same thing, yet are unable to be open and honest with each other about their heartache.

"It was the lie Id believed in the beginning. Yejide would have a child and we would be happy forever. The cost didn't matter. It didn't matter how many rivers we had to cross. At the end of it all was this stretch of happiness that was supposed to begin only after we had children and not a minute before." p.221

I had to take quite a few breaks throughout my reading of Stay With Me, to cope with my own emotions and process what was happening in the story. Yejide's life is full of devastating losses and heartbreak, so much so that those final pages made my heart ache for her and all that she had lost.

As someone who has dealt with infertility and the desire for children in her own marriage, watching Yejide and Akin struggle was what left me the most emotionally scarred. Everyone handles the struggle of wanting children in their own way and Akin's choice of building a marriage around his lie was the worst thing he could have done. It hurt my heart to watch Yejide discover his lies and see how that affected her own thoughts about herself.

"But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves. I bit my tongue because I did not want to ask questions. I did not ask questions because I did not want to know the answers. It was convenient to believe m husband was trustworthy; sometimes faith is easier than doubt." P. 233

I'm so glad I read this book, as much as it made my heart hurt and brought a lot of my own emotions to the surface. Thank you to aaknopf for the copy!! I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a story outside their comfort zone, set in a place you're unfamiliar with. Especially if you don't mind shedding a few tears along the way.

Memorable quotes:

"Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?" p. 75

"The reasons why we do the things we do will not always be the ones that others will remember. Sometimes I think we have children because we want to leave behind someone who can explain who we were to the world when we are gone." p. 119

"You can never cover the truth. Just as nobody can cover the sun's rays with his hands, you can never cover the truth." p.202

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo is a beautiful gift, but in order to reach what lies inside, you must first peel back layer upon layer of wrapping. The book tells the story of the marriage of Yejide and Akin and is set over the span of 20+ years in Nigeria. Although Yejide and Akin married one another for love, the priority their culture gives to having children results in years of heartbreak, secrets, and tragedy. Told from both Yejide's and Akin's perspectives, the story that unfolds is one of the limits of love, the measures the heart takes to protect itself, political turmoil, and the meaning of family.

There were so many things about Stay With Me that I loved, even though my heart took a beating as I read this book. My idea of marital strife is limited to my own modern culture, where financial troubles and infidelity are typically among the worst problems couples face. Stay With Me exposed me to a culture in which marriages are also tested by things like polygamy, a woman's duties to her husband's family, ancient rituals, and constant political turmoil. The most interesting element to the cultural side of the story was in Yejide's conflicting emotions about those elements. In a culture where having multiple wives was more common than not, Yejide showed that loving Akin meant experiencing intense jealousy and resentment when a second wife shows up at her house. Yejide's progressive and feminist ideas, especially for her culture, are shown in stark contrast to other aspects of her personality, such as her pursuit of traditional rituals in order to have a child and her obedience to her mother-in-law and present the reader with a deeply complicated and, at times, frustrating character. This is not to ignore the depth of Akin's character, however. As the book progresses, the reader discovers Akin's secrets and the lengths he is willing to go as a result of his love for Yejide. All these elements lead to a discovery at the end of the book that made the beating my heart took completely worth the pain.

I loved the insight into the Nigerian culture and politics the book provided, and I found myself identifying with Yejide for her independence, love for Akin, and complicated emotions about motherhood. For literary fiction fans, this book is a genuine treat, and the payoff is incredible.

Overwhelmingly sad book about lives ruined by pressures of society. Akin and Yejide long to take their seemingly perfect marriage to the next level by starting a family. When a baby fails to be conceived and the blame is put on Yejide, a second wife is brought into the family. This starts a chain of events that rocks the foundation of Akin and Yejide marriage and the reader has a front row seat through both their viewpoints as life spirals uncontrollably.
Some things didn't add up for me, as an onlooker to the story they seemed obvious. A chance remark during a psychotic episode when Yejide has a false pregnancy is left unexplained. Still, it was an interesting window in Nigeria's emerging struggles as people straddle traditional old views with modern notions. Well written and tragic, I was caught in the story despite the inconsistencies of the plot.

Yetide and her husband Akin are a middle-class couple living in Nigeria in the 1980s. He works in a bank, she runs her own hairdressing salon. They apparently have a happy marriage. But they (or more particularly, Yetide) are under great pressure from Akin’s mother because they do not have a child. They have both grown up in polygamous households and she persuades Akin to take a second wife.

Yetide is a wonderful character, alternately beautiful and strong, and isolated and bullied. Her own mother died in childbirth and she was ostracised by her husband’s other wives. By contrast, she adores Akin’s mother and this makes it harder for her to stand up to her. These experiences compound her own feelings about not being able to have a child and the lengths she is willing to go.

The narration switches between Yetide and Akin’s points of view as we see the strain their changed relationship places on them. You get a powerful sense of the conflicting pressures on them and the importance of family. I also enjoyed the details of their daily life. The minor characters are brilliantly drawn and there is warmth and humour entwined with darker moments. The increasing sense of threat from political events entwines with their personal story.

I did have some issues with the latter part of the book. First we have Yetide’s perspective on a key event, then it doubles back to give us Akin’s. This doesn’t tell you anything you couldn’t have worked out, and slows the story down just when the tension should be rising. I also struggled with the plausibility of some elements of the plot and the end was a little predictable. But despite these reservations, it was a fascinating insight into Nigerian life and the conflict between the ideal of motherhood and the reality.
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I received a copy of Stay with Me from the publisher via Netgalley