When a book feels like advice from a big sister you never knew you needed
Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her latest book 'Dream Count', is a 'slow-cooked literary feast worth waiting for'.
What you need to know:
- Savouring Chimamanda's 'Dream Count' as a slow reader revealed layers of love through four women's interconnected pandemic stories.
- The novel feels like a big sister, with an unexpected grasp on women's interiority while weaving in delicate issues without struggle.
I am late to the Dream Count party; and I can explain. I am a slow reader, a quality that always comes as a surprise for people who know I read a lot. It takes me a while to get through books, especially good books. I like to savour what I read – to pause and take in the sentences, to visualise the characters, to smell the towns and villages where the stories are set. Reading for me, is a pleasure which I am never able to rush through.
While many of my bookish friends were announcing that they had finished reading Dream Count, Chimamanda Adiche’s latest dispatch, I was still marvelling at the big orange, red, yellowish and blue flame, perfectly drawn on the white cover of the book. I read a few reviews but I am not the kind who gets affected by reviews. You can narrate a whole book to me, from start to finish, and I will still sit down and read the book. Maybe I am crazy, but I do not believe anyone can narrate a story better than how it is written.
Major spoiler alert: The book is centred on romantic love. While reading the book, I experienced layers of love. It was like peeling an onion with each layer revealing an even more stinging quality of love. The book has four major female characters who take turns to tell us about their love stories, and how these intertwine with other aspects of their lives such as family, careers, ambitions, challenges, finances; and their dreams and hopes. All the women are tied together by a character called Chiamaka (Chia). Zikora is Chia’s bestie, Omelogor is Chia’s cousin, while Kadi is Chia’s housekeeper. The book is mostly set in the United States of America.
The book is set during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even though I still have fresh memories of the pandemic, it was interesting to remember that period while standing out of it. I can’t help but imagine how unusual the whole pandemic period will sound to future generations – the meanings they will make out of our experiences, and the parallels they will draw to their own lives.
Anxious and alone during the pandemic, and deeply consumed by the fear of having “never been known”, Chia sets out to write the story of her love life. In a no holds barred kind of way, Chia tells us the stories of the men she has dated. She makes it clear that she craves a ‘dreamy’ kind of love. I was having a conversation with a colleague who is also reading the book and I told him, “I think the problem with Chia is that she has the dreamy love that she wants to experience in her head, and even when she meets a man who clearly doesn’t meet up, she recreates him ‘in her own preferences’.
Older sister
She is so determined to see her lovers in a certain way.” I loved Chia’s freedom to look for and just wait until she meets “the certain kind of love” she craved. This does not preclude her from the pain and disappointment that she had to deal with as a result of her choices though.
I was dazed by the courage of Kadi – her ability to step out of the shadows of her older sister, curve out a niche for herself and thrive! She is from Guinea, and the first person from that country that I know so much about! I felt the most pain for Zikor. She was dealing with so much at the same time – rebuilding her relationship with her mother, being abandoned by a lover, re-seeing her childhood and revising the things she believed growing up…all while she is a new mother struggling to produce milk for her baby! I felt like the pain she experienced was disproportionate but hey, we can’t choose the hand fate deals us. Omelogor was my favourite for a long time, until the depression unsettled me.
I stopped often to chat with a friend about the book. As I got towards the end, my feelings about it came together. Dream Count is like a big sister. The grasp on the interiority of women was unexpected but not surprising, considering the pedigree of the book’s author.
Dream Count is like slow-cooked meat with all your choice spices; the kind that flavours get right to the bones. It is difficult to unpack such a complex book in a 700-word column. Time would fail me to speak of how easily and comfortably Chimamanda weaves into the book the most delicate women issues such as menstrual pain, mood swings, pimples, and crushes, without struggling or stripping women of the totality of their being-ness!
In this review, I have barely scratched the surface of the depths in Dream Count. Thisbook deserves tobe unpacked in a proper book club!
The writer is the Research & Impact Editor, NMG, [email protected]