Americanah- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I had to leave this post unfinished and was going to leave it unpublished as well but on re-reading I realised that I'd got further with it than I thought. I'm posting it here because this is a great book, I'm just sorry that my thoughts on it are a little under-developed.

I'm a big fan of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I was gutted to have missed the premiere of Half of a Yellow Sun in Streatham a few of weeks ago. There are lots of things to say about this book- mostly compliments- but there are also a couple of things  about the novel that just lacked a bit of the magic of her previous two novels, and in particular Half of a Yellow Sun which is one of the most astonishing books I have ever read.

Americanah is a departure from the subject matter of Adichie's previous two books. In Americanah, the political situation in Nigeria is the catalyst for the action rather than the subject of the novel as two school mates Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love and go to university in nineties Lagos, amidst the chaos of teacher strikes and military disquiet. Half way through their undergraduate degrees Ifemelu departs for America to complete her studies while Obinze remains in Nigeria before trying his luck in the UK. The themes of love, separation and reconciliation run through the novel but this, frankly, is no where near as interesting as the development of Obinze and, particularly, Ifemelu and the identity politics of being a Black African in America and Europe.

In fact, where Adichie is strongest in the novel is where she is engaging with race through Ifemelu's blogs. It is polemical stuff in its directness, and ensures that readers are fully confronted with the underlying racism (and sexism) at work in so many aspects of Euro-American society. The blogs, emails and texts that permeate this novel  are fascinating in themselves as literary devices as they are undoubtedly the 21st century epistolary reality in literature. We encounter all three every day yet why does it feel so much more modern when they are used in literature? Is it because we are used to the diarist, to the correspondence by letter? How many books can you name using a technological epistolary device that you would deem 'classic'? This gets us in to the realm of 'what makes a classic?' 'what makes a novel a work of literature?': important questions but not the original intention of this post.

But it is interesting nonetheless that, through Ifemelu, Adichie presents her readers with two courses of food for thought: racial prejudice and literary snobbishness. Confronting her reader with both of these simultaneously can almost feel overwhelming and there were a couple of moments, when I was reading this on my commute, that I had to close the book for a few moments and just think about my own attitudes, as a reader of fiction, as a white privileged woman. I loathe this phrase but I've never felt so compelled to check my own privilege as I have reading this book.

That said, I was a little unsatisfied by the conclusion to the book and it felt that, as important as Ifemelu's return to Nigeria was in the trajectory of the novel, the return to her relationship (the word here used in the most general, non-loaded way to avoid any spoilers) with Obinze did not ring true with their characters. This is a shame because it is the last impression I had of the book. But there is much here to enjoy, to be interested and challenged by, and Adichie remains one of the most interesting and compelling authors out there.