Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀: A Review

“Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?”
― Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Stay With Me

Adébáyọ̀’s novel opens with a premise few North Americans could imagine: Yejide’s family has come to present her with her husband’s second wife – a woman and a marriage that Yejide knew nothing about until this woman showed up in her living room.

Yejide and her husband, Akin, married for love. They were professionally successful and happy in their relationship. But four years into their marriage, Yejide has not borne any children. Presuming her barren (despite medical tests to the contrary) Yejide and Akin’s families conspire to marry him to another woman. In Nigeria in the 1980s, where the novel is set, polygamy was no longer the norm but it was also not unheard of. It is amid this cultural context that Adébáyọ̀ begins a story that will go back and forth over the decades of Yejide and Akin’s relationship to examine the price that people will pay for love.

Before I started this novel, I assumed it would center around the introduction of a second wife and how that impacted Yejide and Akin’s marriage, but the book is about so much more than that. (If you are looking for a novelization of Big Love or Sister Wives, you have come to the wrong place.) The couple is committed to saving their marriage but the pressures put on them by their families and their society drive them to increasingly desperate acts that eventually warp and twist their relationship out of all recognition. Most affected is Yejide, who is blamed for the couple’s barrenness and manipulated by people she believed cared about her and her well-being. Neither spouse is blameless in the events that unfold and Adébáyọ̀ is careful to make their reasoning understandable, even as they make choices that are difficult to defend. It’s an emotionally powerful novel that could be compared to An American Marriage in the sense that the corruption of marriage in both books is used as a vehicle to critique society’s prejudices.

Ultimately, the Stay With Me asks difficult questions about how far we are willing to go for love. Often the characters make choices that they tell themselves out of love for another but are actually self-serving and at times cruel. It examines the role of the individual within family and asks how far an individual should be willing to reshape themselves for the sake of duty.  Adébáyọ̀ also takes aim at particular aspects of Nigerian culture – especially as they apply to women and expectations of motherhood.

If you like Chimamanda Ngoza Adiche or Tayari Jones, Adébáyọ̀’s writing has a similar quality and her subject matter evokes that same unblinking intimacy between the reader and the characters. 

Next week, we are off to Alabama! Until then, happy reading!