A Spell of Good Things: A novel

The main characters of this story are Eniola and Wuraola. It took me at least a third of the book to get my head around who was who and their stories, and as I went on, I became increasingly reflective and invested in their struggles and experiences. Eniola is the son of Busuyi, a history teacher, and Abosede, a dyslexic woman who couldn’t learn letters but learned never to be lazy. Nigeria had no use for art, humanities, or history teachers, and Eniola’s life changed overnight when his dad lost his job and couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed to do anything useful for the family. His mom did everything, including having to beg and ask her kids to beg so they could eat a meal that night. And all the while, the father wallowed in his misery without doing much to help them. Wuraola is the golden child of Yeye and Otunba Makinwa, born into a privileged, influential, well-connected family, educated to be a doctor, and soon to be the wife of a politician’s son. Her struggles include pressure from her relatives to marry, and marry well, which of course starts panning out after she’s engaged to a guy the family adores, except he’s volatile, jealous, and tends to slap her around when he’s angry. So, she decides to lie and cover for him because breaking off the engagement would disappoint her family. There is a lot to unpack in this book, but there’s a point where I just read through Eniola and family’s innumerable struggles for being able to afford just about anything, including a meal a day, and then witness Wuraola’s family exorbitantly celebrating their mother’s birthday and her fiancé slapping her for the first time. The chapter ends here, but my thoughts, without minimizing Wuraola’s struggles, were about how she could literally break things off. Even if her family disowns her, she can still live comfortably and never go hungry because her family’s wealth afforded her an education that guaranteed her future. But Eniola and his family have little to no influence over their circumstances. They are stuck where they are, left to starve, beg, or commit crimes to afford basic necessities. Books like these stare us in the face and remind us of our privilege: generational wealth, connections, background, and being able to afford an education. Even when we think we are living just an average life, that life is often the result of privilege that extends a little further than someone else’s, and sometimes at the cost of someone else's exploitation and labor.

At this point, I did not finish it. It's a hard read because there are a great deal of characters and I'm getting very mixed up. I loved her other book, "Stay With Me," and I was looking forward to this tremendously. I would have to say, I might pick it up at another point in time when I'm perhaps less busy just so I could sit down and write down all the characters and a little something about them just so I could keep track of everyone.

If and when I do, I hope to change the rating to a higher score.

It is a sad story that is well written.