Book Review; Stay with me - A. Abadayo

"If the burden is too much and stays too long, even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking and sometimes does break. But when it's in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn't mean it's no longer love." 

Such a sad, sad story, truly heartbreaking. Yejide is pressured by her culture, by her extended family in having children and all the burden about not giving them a heir is on her shoulders. She becomes so obsessed with having a baby that she has an hysterical pregnancy as an extreme reaction to the pressure. But everybody is plotting behind her back to submit to a culture where having a baby, or more than one, is a must and no failure is admitted. She will lose her integrity, her mind, her marriage because of the position motherhood is elevated to in those years in Nigeria. Her heart will break twice and then again.
A story about culture and how we are driven but it. but also a book about marriage and love and motherhood. A novel that will break your heart and will be bitter sweet until the end.
Beautifully written, it's not an easy read as it is very sad, but also an eye opening on a culture so different yet not so far from ours. A very interesting read.

“Sometimes I think we have children because we want to leave behind someone who can explain who we were to the world when we are gone.” 

Overall rating:  7     Plot: 7     Writing style: 7      Cover:  5

Title: Stay with me

Author: Ayobami Adebayo
Publisher: Canongate Books
Pages: 304
Publication year: 2017

The Plot:

Yejide is hoping for a miracle, for a child. It is all her husband wants, all her mother-in-law wants, and she has tried everything. But when her relatives insist upon a new wife, it is too much for Yejide to bear. Unravelling against the social and political turbulence of 1980s Nigeria, Stay With Me is a story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the power of grief, and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood. It is a tale about the desperate attempts we make to save ourselves, and those we love, from heartbreak.

The Author:

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (born 29 January 1988) is a Nigerian writer. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria; shortly after, her family moved to Ilesa and then to Ile-Ife, where she spent most of her childhood in the University Staff Quarters of Obafemi Awolowo University. She studied at Obafemi Awolowo University, earning BA and MA degrees in Literature in English, and in 2014 she went to study Creative Writing (MA Prose fiction) at the University of East Anglia, where she was awarded an International Bursary.She has also studied with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Margaret Atwood

In 2015, she was listed by the Financial Times as one of the bright stars of Nigerian literature Her debut novel, Stay With Me, was published in 2017 by Canongate Books to critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.