A review by silvae
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

4.0

A whirlwind ride: protagonists who live multiple lives within the span of their one own life, a love that acts as a red thread, lived through letters, calls and words unsaid. A definite recommendation.

When I say I love books about yearning and fate and loves that almost came to be, I have to clarify: I really love them with all my heart. It's hard to get it right, and even this one didn't quite hit home for me in a way that I would have wished it had. I seldom say this for books that hit almost 500 pages, but: I wish it had been longer. I wish we could have seen more of Lagos, could have felt the heat, the asphalt, smelled the food and hair products more; I wish we had heard more of the States, of New York, Pennsylvania, of all the places the characters go. A lot of the book seemed to take place in houses, in bedrooms and kitchens, and thus, many details got lost behind air conditioning and closed doors. But perhaps this point of critique is aimed more at myself than at the author: I've never been to Nigeria, I've not even set foot on the African continent. It's haughty to expect a Nigerian author to write in a way that lets me, a German reader, feel what her country feels like to her.

As with many books, I thoroughly enjoyed the first parts of the story, where a young Ifemelu and Obinze spend their days at school and in their dreams of the future. Sadly, as the story progresses, Obinze fades into the background a bit, becoming an object of longing, rather than a person in his own right. I don't think I would have minded this as much, had he not been characterized more in the chapters focusing on his stay in England. The air of idealization and mystery that all those who are loved from afar (both geographically and temporally) dissipates and we are left with a man whose story is only half told, a man whose sole characteristic turns out to be that he loves Ifemelu. The last act of the book - Ifemelu arriving in Lagos - seemed out of place. With so much of the book spent reminding us of this event looming on the horizon, it fell rather flat. Nonetheless, the ending left me satisfied, with Adichie wrapping up the story in a way that made sense and fit the previous events.