Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Two thinly connected perspectives become devastatingly intertwined

A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo

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    If you’ve read Ayobami Adebayo’s Stay With Me, you will probably not be surprised that her most recent novel was longlisted for the Booker prize. While both novels are wonderful, I think the scale of storytelling in A Spell of Good Things grows in such powerful ways. As with her previous novels, this story offers a glimpse into modern life in Nigeria, this time taking us into the lives of Wuraola, the daughter of a doctor who is also a doctor herself and […]

A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

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Cannonball Passport: Still in Nigeria~ Adébáyọ̀ is on some well-trod ground with this, her second (?) book that examines the intersection between the haves and have nots—a dynamic replicated worldwide (oh hi, San Francisco/New York/London) but of particular interest when set in Nigeria, where most of the Western world assumes that there’s mainly have nots that need to be white savior’d. Eniola is the eldest son of an unemployed father, a professor who cannot fathom taking a lower paying lower status role in the rapidly […]

https://cannonballread.com/2023/06/a-spell-of-good-things-wicherwill/

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

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Cannonball Passport: Hello from Nigeria~ An aside that I am on the lookout for novels written by writers from the African diaspora who are not Nigerian, as I think almost 100% of my novels have been by Nigerian authors (writing in English). It’s perhaps that last point which informs why… In any case! I grabbed this book while I was waiting for the next novel, A Spell of Good Things, to be available. My main takeaway, especially after also reading Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright […]

https://cannonballread.com/2023/06/stay-with-me-wicherwill/

A great debut novel

Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo

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This is one of those books about what could very well be about normal life. But it’s told in such an engaging and intriguing way. Adebayo is able to take the things that we all deal with – longing, loss, infidelity, belief – and show us how extraordinary we all really are. In a lot of ways, Stay With Me is a mirror reflecting our own desires, shortcomings, and struggles. We learn this by experiencing the lives of Yejide and Akin, who live in Nigeria […]

when perfect isn’t enough

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SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS Hello! It’s hard for me to write about this one without giving away the whole plot, so I’m going to be oblique. Yejide and Akin are a young, happily married, childless couple, and their childlessness leads them both to some questionable and desperate decisions. Yejide’s life seems damned near impossible, while somehow simultaneously completely normal. Or maybe “normal,” but either way it seems impossible, but there she is, making it happen, in the way that so many women do. What she doesn’t […]

A surprising read on marriage, motherhood, and loneliness.

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This is definitely a book I wouldn’t have picked up on my own, but am glad my book club chose it. It’s nice to read outside my comfort zone every once in a while, and especially when the book turns out to be one that works out for you. Stay With Me is nominally a book about a Nigerian woman named Yejide whose husband brings home a second wife, because Yejide is unable to get pregnant, and his family is pressuring them to have a child. […]



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