Stay With Me

Set in modern-day Nigeria, this novel starts as a story of a stubbornly childless marriage in which Akin succumbs to his family's pressure to take a second wife to ensure the continuation of the family line. Yejida is devastated by this decision -- she and Akin had agreed that polygamy was not for

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them! -- and considers her options for conceiving a child to secure her position as the first wife, the only wife. But the story takes several surprising turns and evolves into a richly wrought story of love, loss, and family. It explores the terrible damage we do when we lie to ourselves and our loved ones but also when we give in to life's hurts, failing to question that which seems inevitable. This was an engaging read told from the POVs of both wife and husband; my main quibble is that their voices were not sufficiently distinct. Still, I'm truly glad I read it.

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Fascinating look at a marriage in 1980s Nigeria marred by childlessness, and the lengths both husband and wife are willing to take to try and save their relationship. I thought there were a few times that the narrative seemed to lose its flow, but overall a great read.

The best debut novel I have read in a long time is Nigerian writer Ayobami Adebayo’s “Stay With Me”, a featured book at this year’s Editor’s Buzz Panel at the Book Expo in May in New York City.

Yejide and Akin are a young married Nigerian couple troubled by their inability to have a baby.

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When their family brings a second wife to become pregnant by Akin, it creates a untenable situation.

This strains Yejide and Akin’s marriage, and Yejide goes to great lengths, including going on a controversial religious pilgrimage, to become pregnant. Yejide will do anything to get pregnant, and Akin is helpless as he watches his wife struggle with their infertility.

Adebayo’s setting of 1980’s Nigeria, with its troubled political times, is enlightening and adds to the tension of the situation that Yejide and Akin find themselves in. I loved learning about the food, customs and life in general in Nigeria.

“Stay With Me” is one of the most compelling, heartbreaking books I have ever read. It is also one of the most surprising. Just when you think you know which direction it is going, it does a 180 degree turn, and you are taken to a new place.

Adebayo is a superb writer, one who combines fascinating, realistic characters and puts them in a storyline that just breaks your heart at so many different places in the story. I found myself so taken in by her beautiful writing, I would lose myself in the story. This is a book you must read in a quiet spot, where you will be uninterrupted.

The title, “Stay With Me” brings the whole story together at the end, and I confess to tearing up and even outright weeping at the end of this beautiful story. I give “Stay With Me” my highest recommendation.

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Different country, different cultural and societal expectations. Nigeria n the eighties and ninties, a young couple, Yejede and Akin meet at University, fall in love and marry. For Akin having a son meant he was a man, for Yejede, having a child meant fulfilling the role she was expected to fulfil.

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In Nigeria, it was also expected for a man to take more than one wife, especially if the wife was unable to provide a child, but Akin had promised Yejede he would never do this. Six years no child, increasing pressure from family, Yejede tries everything, charms, baths everything her mother in law suggests. Nothing works, and promises are broken, finally fueled by desperation and need, an urgent step is taken. Success, but by no means happiness.

This is a very heartfelt story, a story of almost unbearable grief. A grief that is so pervasive even small seeds of hope cannot penetrate. Nigeria falling apart around them, uprisings, attempted coups, an illigal election, but even that cannot compare to the sadness within the family.

Written in so earnest a voice, so very real, I found myself consumed by this story. A very meaningful one. There were things happening behind the scenes that we are not privy to until later in the story. The book contained many small surprises, and does end with a measure of hope and happiness. This author is a new writer and one that is very talented. Can't wait to see what she does next.

ARC from edelweiss and publisher.

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I've read 189 books this year, and this is the best one. This novel is perfect.

This was such a heartbreaking story in so many ways. From arranged marriages, deceit, attempting to achieve the impossible demands and always being overruled, Yejide is hoping and trying to conceive a child. A major necessity of a wife in her native Nigeria.

I felt so sorry for this poor woman.

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First with the demands, then the arrival of a "new" wife and her in-laws were incorrigible! And the husband? I will leave interested persons to discover that feeling as I don't want to insert a spoiler here.

I thoroughly enjoyed my journey with Yejide. She was a great character and she grew on me very quickly. I really liked this story a lot.

Huge thanks to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

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A skillful novelist brings together elements of middle-class Nigerian life and the difficulty of marriage and fertility. Yejide and Akin fall in love when they meet at college, but their families, each with multiple mothers, complicate their desire for children. When they finally come, via an

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alternate method of "sperm donation", Sickle Cell Anemia strikes unmercifully. Told in alternating wife/husband voices, Yelide's insecurity from the loss of her mother in her own birth and Akin's prideful stubbornness cause misery for both. And the political instability, with coups raging in the background, don't help. This is a helpful book for learning about everyday life in a world many of us will never visit in person.

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A heartbreaking story of a Nigerian couple’s desire to have children. Complicated by infertility and the Nigerian custom of taking a second wife to have children, interference by well-meaning family members, the death of children and the fear of facing a third child’s death sends the wife,

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Yejidi, away to lead a new life. The ending is masterfully written and brings closure to her empty life.

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This book was a surprise. I thought it was going to be about the complexity of polygamy but it was more about what someone is willing to do to keep a loved one.

For a short book (260pages) this will definitely have you say” oh my goodness”. Infertility, multiple wives and somewhat unorthodox methods of ensuring pregnancy are just some of the themes explored in this gem of a novel. Told in alternating voices of husband and wife and time frames, the

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format of the novel takes a little while to get used to but that doesn’t detract from this wonderful story. There are a lot- and I mean a lot- of twist and turns in this emotionally laden tale.

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This was such a thought-provoking read. Not the best of the best, but interesting and unlike anything I've read in a while. Worth four stars for being unique. The world can be so different and still somehow be the same. So many feelings are universal but the contexts and motives can be so

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different. It's easy to think that one's own surroundings are the norm and the way it is for most, but they most certainly aren't.

Joy, sorrow, hatred, jealousy, love, loss. The same and not the same. Losing a child, a mother, a spouse. Not having a child or a mother. Somehow the same, but still not.

My favourite quote "Before my right hand was long enough to touch my left ear" says it all. It is the same, but it is different. It is different, but still the same.

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This was such a heartbreaking novel. Due to the intense sadness I felt while reading it, I wanted to lower my rating. However, it is well written and the characters and story-line were utterly engaging. I learned about another culture and how they handle despair.

This debut novel is set in Nigeria from the 1980s to the 2000s, and is centered on Yejide and Akin, who met as students at the University of Lagos and married soon afterward. Yejide's childhood was a difficult one, as her mother died just after giving birth to her, and as a result she was ignored

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and reviled by her father's other wives and her step siblings. Akin was the first son of a middle class family, whose strong willed and influential mother approved of his education and the lifestyle it afforded him, but imposed upon him her Yoruban beliefs, which she believed to be superior and more authentic than the Western culture he learned in school.

Yejide and Akin loved each other deeply, but fell into trouble when they were unable to conceive, to the great dismay and disfavor of Akin's mother, referred to as "Moomi" throughout the novel and his father's other wives. Moomi, believing that the problem lies with Yejide, searches for a second wife for her son, who must bear a child to preserve the family's lineage, even though his younger brother Dotun and his wife have already produced several children. After an extensive search she finds a second wife for him, and he reluctantly agrees to accept Funmi even though he does not wish to have relations to her, which damages the trust and love that Yejide had for him. Funmi does not bear Akin a child, and due to intense pressure from his mother and Yejide's burning desire to bear a child he hatches a secret plan to ensure that it will happen.

For the first 100 pages or so I had no idea why Stay with Me was an appropriate choice for the Wellcome Book Prize longlist, but once I realized where the story was going it became much more interesting, and its relevance as a book about medicine, health and illness became apparent. This was a very enjoyable and often gripping novel about marriage, childbirth, the pressures that supposedly well meaning family members can have on a young couple, and cultural differences, with a sprinkling of humor and the trouble that ordinary Nigerians faced under martial law in the late 20th century. I look forward to reading more of this talented young author's work in the near future.

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What a wonderful book. I was ambivalent about reading it, but from the moment I started I was completely hooked. The characters are so real. I really felt for Yejide (the main female character) and understood her fears and behaviour. But as the book progressed, I realised that she (and I the

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reader) had not understood all the factors which were affecting her life. Slowly she came to a resolution. This book taught me a lot about Nigerian society, and the clashes between younger better educated Nigerians and the attitudes/beliefs of their parents and grandparents. A really good read, I recommend it highly.

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Not sure why I find tragic event in 3rd world countries so much more difficult. Mainly because the things that happen would not happen in my backyard. Wonderful book. So sad and yet so uplifting. Amazing what people can tolerate.

This was a really good read, an eye opening account of love and marriage in Nigeria at a time of political upheaval as well as personal trials. Told entirely in the first person, the narrators were Akin & Yejide, a married couple. At times it took a while to work out who was narrating, but that

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wasn't a significant issue. The chapters vary in timeframe, between the 1990s and the present (2008). There are a host of characters here, and some attitudes that are alien to those of us not from that culture. The family dynamic and the taking of multiple wives has impact on the characters in different ways, and that plays out vividly in here. The way that Yejide's family dynamic affected her and is shown to through the course of the book is saddening.They say you can't choose your family, I doubt she'd have chosen that. Akin has a different family background, the beloved eldest son of the senior wife, he has status within the family that leaves him with added responsibility. The pressure bought to bear on him to have children, as well as the assumption that it is the woman's fault he cannot, has implications for his relationship with Yejide that have loud reverberations. The pain they feel in response to the losses in the book are vividly described.
At times my sympathies were with either husband or wife. By narrating in the first person, it is a very open book, with lots of thoughts and feelings be transmitted to us in almost a confessional style. We know what's going on probably better than either of the protagonists. Having been split and see-sawed between them, my sympathies ended up with both of them. The ending is a little bit neat, but one can't but help that it does work out. The course of true love never did run smooth, and here it certainly does not - but it remains love.

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The blurb on this book is a little misleading. I expected a book about a Nigerian couple going against the tradition of multiple marriages. Unfortunately, this is only a small part of the story. The rest of it involves lots of suffering. It is primarily the story Yejide and her husband, Akin,

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struggling with infertility and loss. It is told in alternating perspectives and multiple timelines from the 1980s to 2000s.

I enjoyed the author’s writing style, but there are a few issues with the construction. The characters are somewhat thin, and act in ways that are puzzling. The plot contains numerous holes, which become glaring by the end. One plot twist is completely unbelievable, and in fact, is negated several chapters later. I think it would have worked better for me if there were moments of lightness to offset the oppressive misery.

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This superb debut novel is set in Nigeria, starting in the 1980s—a time of political upheaval following an aborted election and resurgent military dictatorship. With that as a backdrop, it focuses on the considerably smaller-scale politics within the household of a married couple, Yejide and Akin

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Ajayi.
Narrating mostly by Yejide, with occasional chapters from Akin, author Adelbayo presents an eloquent deconstruction of the social and family pressures on the couple to have children—a not-unusual problem that the author manages to make distinctly fresh. Difficult solutions are proposed and undertaken that have profound consequences, forever altering Yejide and Akin’s relationship.
While that central problem remains intensely engaging, the daily aspects of Yejide’s life, running her hair salon, remembering her childhood and its stories, and catering to relatives’ demands and expectations are rendered in vivid detail. The result is a novel nominated for numerous prizes, one with “remarkable emotional resonance and depth of field,” says Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times.
Adelbayo’s prose is deceptively straightforward, carrying you along easily, and you occasionally must stop yourself to reread a sentence or paragraph to fully appreciate its beauty or insight. An example is when Akin talks about a breast-milk stain on his wife’s blouse: “As I watched the milk stain spread downwards, I realised that the ground under our feet had just been pulled away, we were standing on air, and my words could not keep us from falling into the pit that had opened up beneath us.”

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If a book ever deserved an Oprah Book Club sticker, this is it. One of those books where I think “they have to catch a break...not one more thing can go wrong...oh, that’s even worse!”
Imagine dealing with infertility and then your mother-in-law brings a 2nd wife for your husband. Set in 1980s

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Nigeria it’s the story of a modern educated couple who swore they wouldn’t do polygamy but that becomes unacceptable to their traditional families when they don’t have children. That’s in the first few pages and then it twists and turns. I do think it would be a good book club choice because I’m really trying to figure out whose actions were justified. Near the end one of the characters says that anger is so much easier than shame. At the core all the characters are making terrible decisions to not feel shame or guilt.

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Set in 1980s and 1990s mostly, Akin and Yejide are a progressive couple. But after 4 years of marriage, the meddling families procure a 2nd wife for Akim, convinced that Yejide is barren. Unbeknownst to the elders, Akin's brother becomes the "sperm donor" and Yejide give birth to two children, both

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of whom die from Sickle Cell disease. Convinced that Rotimi has the same fate, Yejide leaves her behind believing that she has died in a sickle crisis while with Akim during a military uprising. So sad that the elders still have certain beliefs and Akim can't talk to Yejide to say his brother was sleeping with her because he asked him to, so she could have children.

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"But the biggest lies are often the ones we tell ourselves."
This book has been in my Kindle for a while and I can't imagine why it has taken me so long to get to it. The audiobook is also narrated by one of my favourite narrators, Adjoa Andoh, who can flit from Nigerian to English with ease. The

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audio version was excellent but I think this is one that I may well read as well at some time in the future, so I can savour it at my own pace.

Yejide and Akin meet at university, it is pretty much love at first sight. After their marriage Akin becomes a banker and Yejide opens a successful hair salon. Although their country allows polygamy, Akin has faithfully promised Yejide that she will be his only wife.
The narrative alternates from one to the other, giving us a complete picture of what each was thinking, or maybe assuming.
Meanwhile, in the background, is the political unrest of Nigeria in the 80s and 90s, always bubbling beneath the surface, and although we are aware of this, it is not the central theme of the book.

This is a book full of cultural interactions on a modern-day Nigerian couple. They are very much in love and hoping to have children, so why did it all go so heartbreakingly wrong? The author has paced her revelations perfectly, I was invested from the first page. As we gradually learn the back story, it becomes clear just how much damage meddling in-laws can do, especially in a country where they have so much influence. I was horrified that Yejide actually addressed her mother-in-law from a kneeling position.

This is the author's debut novel and very much deserved its place on the Bailey's Prize Longlist, alongside such big names as Rose Tremain and Margaret Atwood. I shall most definitely read whatever this author writes next, and this time it won't sit for ages in my Kindle.

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Heartbreakingly beautiful

Heartbreakingly beautiful

This was a heartbreaking story of Akin and Yejide, who fall in love in college, and marry. Yejide is unable to get pregnant, but no one knows why. The doctors say there is nothing wrong with her, and her husband, Akin, says there is nothing wrong with him. Yejide is under intense pressure to

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produce an heir - all the relatives are constantly harping on Yejide to bear a child. After no luck, Akin is forced to take another wife. Yejide decides to try all sorts of things, including seeking out a "specialist" to help her get pregnant so that her husband, who she dearly loves, will not get the other wife pregnant first.
This is a story of a marriage in turmoil, of hidden secrets and deception, of traitors and family. There is heartbreak in Yejide's life, along with turmoil of their country. Akin and his brother also have a falling out over a big secret.
So many things go wrong for Yejide, and she doesn't know if she can handle any more trauma in her life. However, there is one thing that goes right for her, and it looks as there may be redemption.
#StayWithMe #AyobamiAdebayo

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