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TimesLIVE
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's ‘Dream Count' is powerful but awkward
Dream Count Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 4th Estate I have been a fan of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's writing since the days of Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah, so a new novel after a 10-year gap from this Nigerian/American author is something to celebrate. Here she focuses on four women: three living in America and one in Nigeria. The novel opens with Chiamaka, a travel writer who lives in America, contemplating her life at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown. We learn about her background — she is the Nigerian equivalent of a trust-fund kid, the child of very wealthy parents, who likes her travelling to be luxurious and glamorous — and her past romantic entanglements. She is kind, funny and always seems to be searching for something that is just out of reach. Next we meet Zikora, Chiamaka's best friend, who also lives in America and is a lawyer, searching for love, only to be disappointed. She is also wealthy and successful, as is Omelogor, Chiamaka's cousin, who is still based in Nigeria and has risen up the ranks of Nigerian finance — a not-always-honest sector. But having got to the top through fair means and foul, she decides to attend an American university to study, of all things, pornography, and to set up a website to 'educate' men on the subject. The fourth woman, Kadiatou, is somewhat different. She is also based in America, but grew up in rural Guinea, poor and less educated than the three Nigerians. She works as a domestic and as a hotel chambermaid to earn money to give her young daughter a better chance in life than she has had. And here Adichie shifts away from exploring the lives and choices of wealthy, successful women on the cusp of middle age and still uncertain of what they really want, to something rather different. Drawing on the real-life case that concerned the chief of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was accused of rape by an immigrant hotel worker, Adichie, having given Kadiatou a backstory, has her at the mercy of the American judicial system, having been raped by an influential man, a guest in the hotel where she is working. And, while the telling of Kadiatou's story is powerful and poignant, to some extent it throws the rest of the book out of balance. There are times when Dream Count feels like two different novels that have been strung together. The one deals with women who on the surface are successfully competing in a world where they could have been seen as alien, but who are still searching for more than they seem able to reach — a search for the kind of success in their private lives that they have managed in their public ones. And on the other hand, we see a woman who has all the odds stacked against her and while — without wanting to give spoilers — she can be counted as having been treated horribly in her public life, she will ultimately achieve a personal catharsis. Adichie's writing is compelling, and Dream Count always holds one's attention. There is humour, outrage and wit, but Kadiatou's life experience is so removed from that of the other characters, however much they interact with her, that it makes for a slightly uneasy blend.
Telegraph
08-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie returns – with a novel that misses the mark
In December 2011, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Nigeria's leading contemporary novelist – published an essay in The Daily Beast about Nafissatou Diallo, the woman who that May had accused the French economist and politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn of assaulting her in the New York hotel where she worked as a housekeeper. Adichie expressed dismay that, because Diallo had been found to have lied about unrelated matters, 'she becomes nothing but a liar' – leading prosecutors to drop the case. The following year, Adichie was catapulted from literary renown to global celebrity when she gave a TEDx talk titled 'We Should All Be Feminists'. It has been viewed online more than six million times to date, sampled by Beyoncé in her song '***Flawless', quoted on a T-shirt by Dior, and published as a freestanding book, copies of which were at one point being distributed to every 16-year-old schoolchild in Sweden. Her third novel, Americanah (2013), won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in the US and sold more than two million copies worldwide. In 2017, however, Adichie experienced one of the downsides of 21st-century fame after she declined, during an interview with Channel 4 News, to give an unqualified endorsement of the formula 'trans women are women'. Speaking engagements were cancelled; she faced calls for her literary prizes to be rescinded. The essay that she published in response, 'It Is Obscene', in which she railed against 'ideological orthodoxy', was viewed so many times that her website crashed. Throughout all this, the situation of Nafissatou Diallo has remained close to her heart. A five-page author's note at the end of Dream Count, Adichie's first novel in 12 years, explains that Diallo was the inspiration for one of the four women whose interlinked stories comprise the plot. Kadiatou, the character in question, is a magnificent creation – downtrodden but spirited, ignorant but intelligent, superstitious but worldly – and her section of the novel is enormously compelling. We're shown her childhood in a remote Guinean village, where she's subjected to FGM and an arranged marriage, the sudden loss of her husband, and her emigration to America with her daughter Binta in search of a better life. The descriptions of the assault at the hotel and its immediate aftermath are peppered with heart-rending psychological detail. At the hospital, Kadiatou is horrified to learn that she must give up her uniform for evidence. 'She has two sets, but already this feels like a loss, a failure.' Later, when she's given a small bag containing toothpaste, soap and deodorant, she feels embarrassed, 'as if she's being rewarded for her own violation'. It's hard to say why Adichie felt moved to wrap this potent story up with those of three wealthy, educated Nigerian women in their thirties and forties: Chiamaka, a travel writer for whom Kadiatou cooks and cleans; Chiamaka's friend Zikora, a lawyer; and Omelogor, Chiamaka's cousin, who has a high-flying job in a bank and writes a feminist blog in her spare time. Unlike Kadiatou, these women are global citizens, equally at home in Lagos, London or New York. They're capable of amusing swipes at the sanctimony and provincialism of American intellectuals, but they lack the vivid estrangement of Kadiatou's perspective on Western culture. Instead, their sections are largely structured around the disillusionments of middle age. Chiamaka and Zikora, in particular, are coming to terms with the withering of their childhood dreams. They wanted to marry and have children, but the men who've come their way over the years haven't been up to much. We're treated to a rogues' gallery: humourless boyfriends, shallow boyfriends, boyfriends made insufferable by success or embittered by failure, boyfriends inordinately proud of their 'inadequate' genitals, boyfriends who neglect to mention that they're already married. These stories do quicken some sympathy, but it's of a different order to that aroused by Kadiatou's plight, and the other characters suffer from the juxtaposition. Perhaps that wouldn't matter if their role in Dream Count was simply to throw hers into relief, but each of the four sections is given equal billing. A bigger problem is that by endowing Kadiatou with a supportive network of rich, well-connected friends – which her real-life model never had – Adichie dramatically lowers the stakes. The same goes for some of her other departures from the historical record. When the criminal case was dropped, Diallo brought a civil action against Strauss-Kahn – he settled out of court for a rumoured $1.5 million – as well as a separate case against The New York Post, which had alleged that she was a prostitute. Kadiatou, by contrast, is delighted to hear that the charges against her attacker have been dismissed, freeing her from the humiliations of the American legal system, and allowing her to move on with her life. Dream Count concludes on a surprisingly hopeful image: 'Kadiatou and Binta, these two thoroughly decent people, mother and daughter, sitting on a sofa holding hands, their faces bathed in light.' It's strange that a book about disenchantment should end by serving up a fantasy.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Book Review: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest novel marks a vibrant return
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 'Dream Count' feels like a homecoming. The Nigerian author's first work of longform fiction in over a decade reminds us of the sharp wisdom and sturdy empathy that have made her one of the most celebrated voices in fiction. At its face, 'Dream Count' is about the emotional lives of four women living between Nigeria and Washington, D.C., each grappling with a search for purpose, stability and love. Deep into its pages, the book turns to darker questions of justice and exploitation when one character's life is irrevocably changed. The novel begins with the perspective of Chiamaka, or Chia, a Nigerian-born woman who has spent her adulthood and career in America. Living alone amid lockdown in the pandemic, she begins to reflect on a cast of former romances — each one part of her 'dream count,' a loose tally she keeps of her efforts to find a complete, all-knowing love. Her voice and memories connect the many threads of 'Dream Count' that follow. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. In turns, the book shifts its focus to three other women and their dreams. There is Chia's friend Zikora, an ambitious lawyer who is desperate to be a mother, and Chia's brazen cousin Omelogor, a banker in Nigeria who has a crisis of confidence upon coming to America. The novel starts to crackle with urgency and outrage when we meet Kadiatou, Chia's cook and housekeeper who also works as a maid in an upscale hotel. Far from the Guinean village of her youth, Kadiatou has finally found steady work and contentment in America when she is suddenly, horrifically assaulted by one of the hotel's prominent guests. Adichie renders the moment of her assault in quick, shuddering details. Though Kadiatou is surprised to find her bosses believe her account, she soon learns that the rest of the world wants a say, as well. Reporters and photographers stake out her apartment within hours of the assault. Her body and life history are dissected as evidence in the lead-up to an international trial. Kadiatou's tale isn't born completely of imagination. Nearly 15 years ago, a New York hotel housekeeper named Nafissatou Diallo came forward to accuse the then-leader of the International Monetary Fund of sexually assaulting her when she arrived to clean his room. Adichie explains in the novel's endnote how she was hooked and gutted by Diallo's testimony. "Dream Count" is Adichie's way, she writes, of dignifying her story. 'Imaginative retellings matter,' she says. 'Literature keeps the faith and tells the story as reminder, as witness, as testament.' The novel's undercurrent of politics hums louder in the aftermath of those scenes. This is, after all, a book by the same author of 'We Should All Be Feminists.' We see Chia's dream career as a travel writer hampered by American editors who would rather publish outdated stereotypes of Africans. The saucy, sharp Omelogor is willing to play in the corrupt games of powerful men to build her wealth, but feels ridiculed and dismissed in America for that same spirit. One could question what purpose it serves for the novel to include Kadiatou's wrenching survival story alongside the tales of well-to-do women. Though Chia and her friends root for and support Kadiatou, they're ultimately embroiled in their own growing pains. At points, the novel's sense of time speeds up too quickly or fails to fully develop a thread. (The character Zikora, especially, fades away from later parts of the book.) But none of these weak points ever risks dampening the novel's vibrant energy. 'Dream Count' succeeds because every page is suffused with empathy, and because Adichie's voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever. Reading about each woman, we begin to forget that we're separate from these characters or that their lives belong to fiction. ___ AP book reviews:
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Book Review: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest novel marks a vibrant return
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 'Dream Count' feels like a homecoming. The Nigerian author's first work of longform fiction in over a decade reminds us of the sharp wisdom and sturdy empathy that have made her one of the most celebrated voices in fiction. At its face, 'Dream Count' is about the emotional lives of four women living between Nigeria and Washington, D.C., each grappling with a search for purpose, stability and love. Deep into its pages, the book turns to darker questions of justice and exploitation when one character's life is irrevocably changed. The novel begins with the perspective of Chiamaka, or Chia, a Nigerian-born woman who has spent her adulthood and career in America. Living alone amid lockdown in the pandemic, she begins to reflect on a cast of former romances — each one part of her 'dream count,' a loose tally she keeps of her efforts to find a complete, all-knowing love. Her voice and memories connect the many threads of 'Dream Count' that follow. In turns, the book shifts its focus to three other women and their dreams. There is Chia's friend Zikora, an ambitious lawyer who is desperate to be a mother, and Chia's brazen cousin Omelogor, a banker in Nigeria who has a crisis of confidence upon coming to America. The novel starts to crackle with urgency and outrage when we meet Kadiatou, Chia's cook and housekeeper who also works as a maid in an upscale hotel. Far from the Guinean village of her youth, Kadiatou has finally found steady work and contentment in America when she is suddenly, horrifically assaulted by one of the hotel's prominent guests. Adichie renders the moment of her assault in quick, shuddering details. Though Kadiatou is surprised to find her bosses believe her account, she soon learns that the rest of the world wants a say, as well. Reporters and photographers stake out her apartment within hours of the assault. Her body and life history are dissected as evidence in the lead-up to an international trial. Kadiatou's tale isn't born completely of imagination. Nearly 15 years ago, a New York hotel housekeeper named Nafissatou Diallo came forward to accuse the then-leader of the International Monetary Fund of sexually assaulting her when she arrived to clean his room. Adichie explains in the novel's endnote how she was hooked and gutted by Diallo's testimony. "Dream Count" is Adichie's way, she writes, of dignifying her story. 'Imaginative retellings matter,' she says. 'Literature keeps the faith and tells the story as reminder, as witness, as testament.' The novel's undercurrent of politics hums louder in the aftermath of those scenes. This is, after all, a book by the same author of 'We Should All Be Feminists.' We see Chia's dream career as a travel writer hampered by American editors who would rather publish outdated stereotypes of Africans. The saucy, sharp Omelogor is willing to play in the corrupt games of powerful men to build her wealth, but feels ridiculed and dismissed in America for that same spirit. One could question what purpose it serves for the novel to include Kadiatou's wrenching survival story alongside the tales of well-to-do women. Though Chia and her friends root for and support Kadiatou, they're ultimately embroiled in their own growing pains. At points, the novel's sense of time speeds up too quickly or fails to fully develop a thread. (The character Zikora, especially, fades away from later parts of the book.) But none of these weak points ever risks dampening the novel's vibrant energy. 'Dream Count' succeeds because every page is suffused with empathy, and because Adichie's voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever. Reading about each woman, we begin to forget that we're separate from these characters or that their lives belong to fiction. ___ AP book reviews: Helen Wieffering, The Associated Press
Associated Press
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Book Review: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest novel marks a vibrant return
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 'Dream Count' feels like a homecoming. The Nigerian author's first work of longform fiction in over a decade reminds us of the sharp wisdom and sturdy empathy that have made her one of the most celebrated voices in fiction. At its face, 'Dream Count' is about the emotional lives of four women living between Nigeria and Washington, D.C., each grappling with a search for purpose, stability and love. Deep into its pages, the book turns to darker questions of justice and exploitation when one character's life is irrevocably changed. The novel begins with the perspective of Chiamaka, or Chia, a Nigerian-born woman who has spent her adulthood and career in America. Living alone amid lockdown in the pandemic, she begins to reflect on a cast of former romances — each one part of her 'dream count,' a loose tally she keeps of her efforts to find a complete, all-knowing love. Her voice and memories connect the many threads of 'Dream Count' that follow. In turns, the book shifts its focus to three other women and their dreams. There is Chia's friend Zikora, an ambitious lawyer who is desperate to be a mother, and Chia's brazen cousin Omelogor, a banker in Nigeria who has a crisis of confidence upon coming to America. The novel starts to crackle with urgency and outrage when we meet Kadiatou, Chia's cook and housekeeper who also works as a maid in an upscale hotel. Far from the Guinean village of her youth, Kadiatou has finally found steady work and contentment in America when she is suddenly, horrifically assaulted by one of the hotel's prominent guests. Adichie renders the moment of her assault in quick, shuddering details. Though Kadiatou is surprised to find her bosses believe her account, she soon learns that the rest of the world wants a say, as well. Reporters and photographers stake out her apartment within hours of the assault. Her body and life history are dissected as evidence in the lead-up to an international trial. Kadiatou's tale isn't born completely of imagination. Nearly 15 years ago, a New York hotel housekeeper named Nafissatou Diallo came forward to accuse the then-leader of the International Monetary Fund of sexually assaulting her when she arrived to clean his room. Adichie explains in the novel's endnote how she was hooked and gutted by Diallo's testimony. 'Dream Count' is Adichie's way, she writes, of dignifying her story. 'Imaginative retellings matter,' she says. 'Literature keeps the faith and tells the story as reminder, as witness, as testament.' The novel's undercurrent of politics hums louder in the aftermath of those scenes. This is, after all, a book by the same author of 'We Should All Be Feminists.' We see Chia's dream career as a travel writer hampered by American editors who would rather publish outdated stereotypes of Africans. The saucy, sharp Omelogor is willing to play in the corrupt games of powerful men to build her wealth, but feels ridiculed and dismissed in America for that same spirit. One could question what purpose it serves for the novel to include Kadiatou's wrenching survival story alongside the tales of well-to-do women. Though Chia and her friends root for and support Kadiatou, they're ultimately embroiled in their own growing pains. At points, the novel's sense of time speeds up too quickly or fails to fully develop a thread. (The character Zikora, especially, fades away from later parts of the book.) But none of these weak points ever risks dampening the novel's vibrant energy. 'Dream Count' succeeds because every page is suffused with empathy, and because Adichie's voice is as forthright and clarifying as ever. Reading about each woman, we begin to forget that we're separate from these characters or that their lives belong to fiction. ___
