Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, Financial Times, and Zoetrope: All-Story. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, both national bestsellers. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
"Affecting . . . The Africa in Adichie's collection isn't the
Africa that Americans are familiar with from TV news or newspaper
headlines. Her stories are not about civil war or government
corruption or deadly illnesses. She is interested in how clashes
between tradition and modernity, familial expectations and imported
dreams affect relationships between husbands and wives, parents and
children.
In
these stories, which take place in Nigeria and the United States,
questions of belonging and loyalty are multiplied several times
over. Her characters, many of whom grew up in Nigeria and emigrated
(or saw their relatives emigrate) to America, find themselves
unmoored, many stumbling into danger or confusion. Rather than
becoming cosmopolitan members of a newly globalized world, they
tend to feel dislocated on two continents and caught on the margins
of two cultures that are themselves in a rapid state of flux. . . .
The most powerful stories in this volume depict immensely
complicated, conflicted characters, many of [whom] have experienced
the random perils of life firsthand. . . . Adichie demonstrates
that she is adept at conjuring the unending personal ripples
created by political circumstance, at conjuring both the 'hard,
obvious' facts of history, and 'the soft, subtle things that lodge
themselves into the soul.'"
–Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Haunting . . . In the first of these 12 stories set in Nigeria and
the U. S., a spoiled college student doing a stint in a Nigerian
prison finds he can't keep silent when the police harass an elderly
inmate. In another, what seems like an excellent arranged marriage
is doomed once the bride joins her husband in Brooklyn and learns
he's an overbearing bore. And for the lonely narrator of the title
story, falling in love means 'the thing that wrapped itself around
your neck, that nearly choked you before you fell asleep,' is
finally loosened. Adichie, a Nigerian who has studied in the U. S.,
writes with wisdom and compassion about her countrymen's
experiences as foreigners, both in America and in their changing
homeland. Here is one of fiction's most compelling new voices."
–Vick Boughton, People, A People Pick
"Imagine how hard it must be to write stories that make
American readers understand what it might be like to visit a
brother in a Nigerian jail, to be the new bride in an arranged
marriage, to arrive in Flatbush from Lagos to meet a husband or to
hide in a basement, waiting for a riot to subside, wondering what
happened to a little sister who let go of your hand when you were
running. How would it feel to be a woman who smuggled her
journalist husband out of Nigeria one day and had her 4-year-old
son shot by government thugs the next? If reading stories can make
you feel . . . caught between two worlds and frightened, what would
it be like to live them? This is Adichie's third book, and it is
fascinating. . . . Characters (many in their teens and early 20s)
feel a yanking on invisible collars as they try to strike out on
their own. Sometimes, ties are cut by distance, leaving a
protagonist disoriented and alone . . . Sometimes a lie or a death
cuts the lines of trust that tie a character to the world they
inhabit. Most of Adichie's characters are alone, adrift in a
strange physical or emotional landscape. . . . These characters
feel invisible, erased. They can't go home. They want to melt into
America. What would it be like to feel that sinister thing, memory,
around your neck? Perhaps you can imagine after all."
—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Don't let Adichie's highbrow resume scare you away from her
accessible and compelling short-story collection. Yes, the
31-year-old Nigerian writer won a 2008 MacArthur Genius award. But
unlike many literary authors, she eschews pretentious obscurity in
favor of clarity. In these stories set both in Nigeria and in the
USA, she touches on religion, corruption, Nigeria's civil war and
living in America as a lonely African wife. Mostly, however, she
creates indelible characters who jump off the page and into your
head and heart."
–Deirdre Donahue, USA Today"Wonderfully crafted . . . Prose this
skillful deserves international acclaim. Insightful, powerful and
brimming with characters that seem to leap from the printed page,
this collection is nothing less than a literary feast."
—Larry Cox, Tucson Citizen
"The tensions embodied in [the story 'Jumping Monkey Hill']—between
fiction and autobiography, the expectations of the observer and the
experience of the witness, not to mention the value of certain
experiences in the global literary marketplace—practically seep
through the pages of this collection. As a whole it traces the
journey Adichie herself has taken. . . . All [her] personhoods are
represented here: the sheltered child, the vulnerable immigrant in
Philadelphia and Brooklyn, the foreign student adrift in a
dormitory in Princeton, the young African writer asked to objectify
herself for an uncomprehending audience. . . . 'Ghosts,' in which
an elderly professor in Nsukka meets an old colleague he assumed
had died in the Biafran war, is a nearly perfect story, distilling
a lifetime's weariness and wicked humor into a few pages. 'Tomorrow
Is Too Far,' a kind of ghostless ghost story, delves beautifully
into the layers of deception around a young boy's accidental death
. . . And there is a whole suite of stories in which Adichie calmly
eviscerates the pretensions of Westerners whose interest in Africa
masks an acquisitive, self-flattering venality. . . . Adichie is
keenly aware of the particular burdens that come with literary
success for an immigrant writer, a so-called hyphenated American.
Though she strikes a tricky balance—exposing, while also at times
playing on, her audience's prejudices—one comes away from The Thing
Around Your Neck heartened by her self-awareness and
unpredictability. She knows what it means to sit at the table, and
also what it takes to walk away."
—Jess Row, The New York Times Book Review
"Adichie belongs to the rare group of young writers whose wisdom
sets them apart from writers of their age. . . . The Thing Around
Your Neck once again showcases her insights into human nature under
social, ethical, cultural as well as personal dilemmas. . . . In
her notes about novel writing, Elizabeth Bowen emphasized both the
unpredictability and the inevitability of a character's actions.
Adichie' s best stories are perfect examples of her masterful
perception of these seemingly conflicting qualities within human
nature. I hesitate to use 'create,' as Adichie' s characters don't
feel as though they were merely created; rather, it is as if they
were invited into the stories by the most understanding hostess,
and their dilemmas, pains and secrets were then related to us by
the hostess, who seems to understand the characters better than
they understand themselves, who does not judge them, and who treats
them with respect and love and empathy that perhaps they would
never have allowed themselves to imagine. . . . Reading ['On Monday
of Last Week'] is like taking a journey of having one's heart
broken in a foreign land, yet it is not the foreignness of the land
that brings the pain but the foreignness in any human heart. . . In
this and a few other stories about Nigerian women who have found
themselves in America, Adichie transcends the norm of immigrants'
stories and give the characters complexities that would be absent
in a less masterful storyteller. . . . 'The Headstrong Historian,'
a story that encompasses four generations of women (and men),
achieves what a short story rarely does, with a symphonic quality
that one would only hope to see in a master's stories, like those
of Tolstoy. . . . Together these stories once again prove that
Adichie is one of those rare writers that any country or any
continent would feel proud to claim as its own."
–Yiyun Li, San Francisco Chronicle
"Haunting . . . Adichie deploys her calm, deceptive prose to
portray women in Nigeria and America who are forced to match their
wits against threats ranging from marauding guerillas to microwave
ovens. . . . The devastating final piece, 'The Headstrong
Historian,' seems to carry the whole history of a continent in its
bones: tragic, defiant, revelatory."
–Michael Lindgren, The Washington Post
"Like those of Jhumpa Lahiri, whose work bears a notable
resemblance to Adichie's, the characters of The Thing Around Your
Neck are caught between past and present, original and adopted
homelands. . . . America is a land of yoga classes, drive-through
banks, and copious supermarket carts, but it is also a surprisingly
unsatisfactory promised land . . . a place where half-truths and
buried secrets that form a life are ruthlessly exposed. [Here also
is] Nigerian life seen from the outside: the perspective of the
American immigrant, the memory tourist, the second-class gender.
They are the stories of those whose tales are not told. Adichie
deftly accesses the privileged mindsets of her Nigerian characters,
who stubbornly insist on believing that they are to be protected
from the worst. . . . Her Americans are outsiders clamoring to be
let into society; her upper-class Nigerians are insiders clamoring
to be let out of history. 'It would have been so easy for him,'
[one] narrator observes on the occasion of her brother's release
from prison, 'to make a sleek drama of his story, but he did not.'
Nor does Adichie, who prefers ambiguity, and a certain abruptness
of tone, to the carefully raked garden paths of other writers. . .
. Whether these stories reflect the writer's own experiences, only
Adichie knows. That they reflect the lives of her countrymen, there
can be no doubt."
–Saul Austerlitz, Boston Sunday Globe
"There are various ways writers can be ambitious, but in our era
they are often judged to be so only if their prose is complex,
elusive, and somewhat arcane. The Nigerian writer Adichie is an
exception to this 'rule.' She's a deeply ambitious and justly
celebrated writer whose prose is lucid and whose narrative method
is simple and straightforward. Indeed, the 12 clearly told tales
that make up The Thing Around Your Neck resonate powerfully because
of their thematic depth and their author's ability to understand
and reveal her characters. [The collection] explores the frequently
troubled lives of Nigerians in their native country as well as
those trying to adapt to life in America. Often these stories
involve a conflict between personal fulfillment and political
commitment and/or fidelity to one's roots. . . . The theme of the
displaced African, confused and alienated in America in an almost
Alice in Wonderland-like way, recurs in a number of these stories.
. . . While Adichie's vision of America is often bitterly comic and
sometimes scathing, she is equally, if not more, critical of the
injustice and violence that pervades Nigeria. 'Cell One,' for
example, is a kind of broken family romance told from the
daughter's point of view that centers on the increasingly dangerous
behavior of her 17-year-old brother. [It] is, perhaps, the most
successful instance of Adichie' s enriching her story by adding a
social dimension to it, maintaining all the while a fine balance
between the personal and political. . . . While many of her
characters are suffused with sorrow, they also generally evolve
enough to make decisions that can help their lives. . . . For
Adichie, hope lies in taking action, as indeed she herself did in
writing this poignant, compelling book."
–Richard Burgin, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Wicked . . . While [Adichie's] work is never without its political
undertones—can any novel about Africa ever be entirely
apolitical?—her primary purpose is literary, not doctrinal. Her
work does not buckle under its political burden, but supports it
with a great humanity. . . . Adichie excels at the depiction of
complicated relationships, familial and romantic . . . Many of the
stories [in The Thing Around Your Neck] focus on recent
immigrants—young women who have come to America for different
reasons, usually romantic—who must negotiate sexual politics along
with cultural politics. The gulf between expectations and realities
among these characters is unsurprising . . . But Adichie reveals it
in unexpected ways, in a language that preserves the African-ness
of her characters while adding their stories to the long history of
immigrants in America. . . . These characters are close enough to
American society to observe it well, but distant enough to maintain
a mordant and sometimes biting perspective. . . .[Adichie's]
language is recognizably Chinua Achebe's: the transposition of Igbo
expressions and proverbs into English, the dispassionate portrayal
of both traditional religion and Christianity. And the message as
well: the reclamation of African culture from colonialist writers
whose texts were predicated on racist assumptions, subtle or
blatant, and from an educational system in which children read
stories depicting members of their own race as uncultured savages,
and Europeans as the bears of wisdom. But Adichie has gone beyond,
or away from, Achebe in an important way: she is optimistic. She
may have grown up on Enid Blyton, but in her lifetime, she has
already seen things that fall apart begin to come back
together." —Ruth Franklin, The New Republic
"Powerful . . . Arresting. The distilled world of the short story
suits Adichie beautifully: She shows a rare talent for
finding the images and gestures that etch a narrative moment
unforgettably in the reader's memory. . . . Many of the characters
in the book divide their time between Nigeria and the United
States. A very solid collection, [one that] resonates with an
aching undercurrent of dislocation and loss of identity. . .
Exquisite stories that will take you to places you didn' t know
existed."
–Mary Brennan, The Seattle Times
"Powerful, deftly assembled . . . Adichie's gifts as a storyteller
[are all] on display . . . The backgrounds of her characters may
initially seem exotic to Western readers. And yet the love,
justice, and understanding they seek are so fundamental and
familiar that there are few readers of any background who won't
recognize acres–perhaps even miles–of common ground. Here,
Adichie's characters are as likely to inhabit Hartford or Princeton
as they are Nsukka or Lagos. . . . But all in some way are in a
state of loss. . . . For most of them, there is a loss of
wholeness, thrust upon them by both the discomfort of their own
country and the powerful pull of Western culture, into whose orbit
they seem constantly to be sucked, whether they have ever actually
set foot outside Nigeria or not. . . . Adichie's gift to readers in
this book is to give voice to some of the forms of Nigerian
heartbreak that Westerners might not otherwise hear. But despite
the deep hurt that ripples through these stories, the characters
never shout out their sadness. If they are alive, they know they
are fortunate. If they are sad, they hold it within. Wisely,
Adichie mostly keeps away from politics. Her stories are not a
condemnation of the West or the US. Instead, Adichie gives us what
a first-rate writer should: a keen yet poignant view of the
contradictions of the human condition."
–Marjorie Kehe, The Christian Science Monitor
"Remarkable . . . I congratulate you on this book. It is so moving
and powerful–each of these stories you have written."
–Diane Rehm, "The Diane Rehm Show," National Public Radio
"These 12 well-written short stories are provocative in their
portrayal of women and men in crisis, and satisfying in their
finality. . . . A finely crafted, compelling and satisfying set of
stories."
—Lois D. Atwood, The Providence Journal "The immigrant experience,
that endlessly complicated balancing act between longing for
acceptance and resisting pressure to just shut up and be grateful
for your green card, is rich terrain for fiction that explores the
tensions that arise where politics and the personal intersect. The
celebrated writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 31, knows this terrain
well. . . . In the dozen stories in The Thing Around Your Neck,
Adichie writes with great sensitivity of the struggles of Nigerian
immigrants to forge an identity in the modern world without
discarding the values of their culture of origin. Violence casts a
long shadow over the collection. A few stories explore the
frustration of trying to make an arranged marriage work in a new
country. [One character says of America,] 'It forces egalitarianism
on you. You have nobody to talk to, really, except for your
toddlers, so you turn to your housegirl. And before you know it,
she is your friend. Your equal.' Virginia Woolf could not have said
it better. . . . Whether they live in Nigeria or the U. S., the
women in Adichie's stories do not have it easy. One thing they do
have, though, is brains. Their suffering is all the more poignant
because, deep down, they know the price you pay for not doing what
you want in life is incalculable."
–Conan Putnam, Chicago Tribune
"You know it when you see it: the ability to conjure whole lives,
times, places, worlds in a few deft splashes of prose, Picassoesque
line drawings of the mind, without resort to attitudinal or
perspectival gambits, language games, postmodern devices. Plenty of
people have recognized the sure-handed literary classicism of
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Now comes a dozen
stories, half set in Nigeria and–in a creative departure for
Adichie–the other half in America. The characters in the stories
set stateside are stymied by home ties and bemused by America. The
coloration and vigor [in those stories] rarely pale, and Adichie's
supple talents are on full display in her African tales, which
never fail to touch the universal in the particular experience of
the aging revolutionary professor, the fallen bourgeois golden boy,
the shopping-crazy gal caught up in a marketplace massacre. Like
most of us–but perhaps more so–Adichie's imagination seems fired by
nostalgia for a lost childhood world at least as much as by the
challenges of the ever-moving present tense that has swept it so
unceremoniously, irretrievably away."
–Ben Dickinson, Elle
"The stories in The Thing Around Your Neck are so exquisite they
grab you by the throat and stop your heart."
–Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
"Bold, fearless, and completely unapologetic . . . Many of the
book's main characters are women, women who are filled with
longing, regret, sadness. The men in their lives are a
disappointment; America is an even bigger one. . . . The immigrants
who come here are stifled, they have to make great sacrifices, huge
compromises. . . . A few of the stories in the collection even
feature gay characters, a no-no in African literature . . .
Adichie' s biting humor shines through in the tale 'Jumping Monkey
Hill.'"
–Lola Ogunnaike, "African Voices," CNN International
"Adichie embodies a literary cosmopolitanism as expansive and
mellifluous as her name: she offers tales that make world
literature from American fictions. . . . In The Thing Around Your
Neck, [she] maps narrative possibilities for examining postcolonial
Nigeria, the haunting ramifications of civil war and
government-sanctioned terrorism, and the aching process of
immigrant acclimation to the United States. . . . In stories like
'Ghosts' and the outstanding title story, Adichie suggests that
what lies ahead or abroad [for Nigerians] may not offer protections
from history's indignities. . . . Adichie displays strong control
of the short form. . . . 'The Headstrong Historian' is a perfect
representation of the author's great imagination and skills . . .
Adichie's abilities to compress and drive the narrative dazzle
us."
–Walter Muyumba, The Dallas Morning News
"Fiercely sympathetic tales of Nigerian expatriates who find
themselves alienated on both continents."
–Megan O'Grady, Vogue
"Beautifully crafted . . . As Baltasar Gracián, a 17th-century
Spanish writer, once wrote, 'Good things, when short, are twice as
good.' This compressed kind of pleasure is abundantly evident in
[The Thing Around Your Neck]. Adichie has attracted a lot of
attention in her relatively short career . . . This book will show
you why."
–Robert L. Pincus, San Diego Union-Tribune
"Packing a full world into a few paragraphs is precisely the short
storyteller's challenge, the task Adichie has set for herself in
this [collection]. This young Nigerian writer proves herself worthy
of the challenge, building a rich universe in both broad and subtle
strokes. . . . Certainly [these stories are] strong enough to stand
alone. But the cumulative effect for an American reading them is a
history lesson injected with emotional immediacy. Adichie examines
lives interrupted by the onset of civil war in the late 1960s. She
dramatizes the anxiety of Nigerians waiting to hear if their loved
ones were aboard the plane that crashed after takeoff from Lagos in
2004 and killed everyone on board. . . . Adichie's final story,
'The Headstrong Historian,' is well-placed. It offers a reckoning
of Nigerian history in the character of Afamefuna, whose
understanding of her grandmother's life provides insight into her
own education and upbringing away from the tribe. . . .
Haunting."
–Maggie Galehouse, Houston Chronicle
"Half of a Yellow Sun was the kind of protean work that seemed
impossible to follow. . . . The Thing Around Your Neck has [the
same] lyricism in common with her last book, but rather than being
focused on the past, it brings contemporary issues of politics and
immigration into sharp focus. . . . The most successful stories in
the book concern problems of immigration and shine an often harsh
light on America and Americans while portraying the seemingly
contradictory love affair the world continues to have with our life
and customs. . . . Her view of Africans is no less unsparing. . . .
Adichie' s narrators have in common the diction of outsiders,
always standing apart from others, even those with whom they might
claim solidarity. . . . What's on display in these stories is a
fierce imagination and dazzling use of language that marks Adichie
as a writer of impressive reach and achievement. . . . There's no
question that this is a writer to watch, one from whom we can
expect great things in the future."
–David Milofsky, The Denver Post
"Nigeria has produced such talented writers as Wole Soyinka and
Chinua Achebe. To that list we can now add Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie, whose accomplished collection, The Thing Around Your Neck,
further burnishes her considerable reputation. . . . She makes
observations of the immigrant experience that are affectingly
acute. . . . These are powerful stories by a masterful writer that
perceptively evoke the less celebrated aspects of immigration–loss
of place, familiar comforts and unquestioning acceptance by
others–as well as of the toll of pervasive authoritarianism back
home."
–Judith Chettle, Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Compelling, often emotionally wrenching . . . Intriguing . . .
Adichie writes of the immigrant's experience of coming to the U. S.
from Nigeria and the social and physical consequences that precede
and follow. . . . A revealing outsider's view of America appears in
many of these stories . . . Adichie deftly pulls much from her
native country's troubled past and present, turning it into high
and intimate drama . . . Adichie's stories show more of the
difficulties and less of the pleasures of everyday life in Nigeria
and what it means to leave that life for America: Neither choice is
easy, both have dangers. . . . Her words and stories are insightful
and provocative and tell us much about the human experience in
difficult times."
–Jim Carmin, The Oregonian
"These 12 stories by Nigerian—born Adichie provide a wise and
minutely observed update of the American-immigrant experience. Her
narrators, most young African women, navigate the exotic terrain of
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, their perceptions sharpened by
homesickness. Macy' s, for instance, can take on the eerie grandeur
of an imperial palace."
–Jed Lipinski, The Village Voice
"Dazzling . . . Witty . . . One of the finest [collections] ever
written by an African writer. . . . Like [Chinua] Achebe, Adichie
is an astonishing Ibo writer who grew up in eastern Nigeria, but
unlike her literary parent, Adichie has veered off into territory
that is often remarkably different from Achebe's. Moreover, her
worldview has been indelibly shaped by her gender . . . Adichie
[has] emerged as a strong voice, worthy of our attention. . . . One
of the most original of these stories, 'The Headstrong Historian,'
reveals why so many of her readers believe Adichie is Achebe
reborn. . . . But then once Adichie has got us hooked, she steps
into her own shoes and takes the reader on a trip that I doubt even
Achebe (for all his brilliance) would have ever imagined. What a
delicious surprise. [Adichie] hasn't eliminated her literary father
but she has discovered her own territory. [This story] heralds not
only her own voice but her genuine craft as a writer of prose
narratives. . . . There's no telling where she'll go next."
–Charles R. Larson, CounterPunch
"Ask most Americans what they know about Nigeria and they may be
hard-pressed to mention anything beyond oil production and scams on
the Internet. Adichie knows far more, and her writing about her
homeland and its emigrants to America illuminates this powerful
African country. The Thing Around Your Neck focus[es] mainly on
middle-class Nigerians struggling with issues of love, class, war,
homeland and loneliness [and it] offers a window on a country and a
people that Americans would do well to understand better. . . .
Many of the stories involve Nigerian women caught between old
country customs and new world ways, whether in their home country
or as immigrants to America. Adichie, whose prose is both precise
and evocative, gracefully shows us how the particulars of their
experiences fit into the universal struggles of women the world
over."
–Carole Goldberg, The Hartford Courant
"Absorbing . . . The Thing Around Your Neck revolves around
questions of identity in an era of globalization. We live in a
world of ethnic neighborhoods with hazy geographic borders, a world
of immigration, diasporas, and hybridizations. The 'things' hanging
around all of our necks are complicated strands of social,
cultural, religious, and historical roots that gradually weave into
the core of one's self. [Adichie's] fiction furnishes a wider
panorama of life, including but surpassing the political. . . .
Adichie's lyrically written stories frequently depict the elements
of competing religious perspectives that are such a central part of
Nigerian life today. . . . Faith is a central part of what it means
to be a global citizen in today's flat world. Adichie's potent
fiction helps us to recognize the truth and the lies, the
connections and the divisions, that characterize our time."
–Susan Vanzanten, Books & Culture
"The master storyteller weaves a dozen insightful tales set in
war-ravaged Nigeria and America, where violence continues to
escalate."
–Allen Pierleoni, San Luis Obispo Tribune
"Whether [Adichie's] characters are finding trouble in their home
country of Nigeria or as immigrants in America, they all face
difficulties in establishing themselves as a known commodity and
figuring out where they stand within the socio-economic and social
system in which they are living. Adichie writes deeply but without
being overbearing. [Her] writing lacks pretension and avoids the
plea for emotion that leads many of today's writers to create
melodramatic novels of heartbreak and loss. Instead, Adichie
achieves an understated emotional rawness which leads to powerful
fiction."
–Moira Phillips, Charleston City Paper
"Searching . . . Adichie displays a deft feel for the texture of
violence. . . . This collection [is] concerned with how large
forces–violence, tradition, immigration, colonialism–shape and
determine individual lives. . . . The emotional weight of The Thing
Around Your Neck derives from the feeling of ambivalence about
opportunity in America and the chaos of modern Nigeria that's built
up through the whole collection– the real 'thing' around the
characters' necks . . . Adichie, who splits time between Nigeria
and the U. S., has likened America to 'a very rich uncle,' and her
stories are infused with the curiosity, admiration, and aloofness
characterizing that perspective. . . . Adichie [has a] feel for the
traditional sensations of Nigerian life, the fragrant jacaranda
blossoms, warm harmattan breeze and 'yellow-bellied bees' that buzz
in the afternoon."
–Kevin Hartnett, Paste Magazine
"In Adichie's meticulously detailed stories of Nigerians at home
and abroad, national identity functions as both a pendant and a
millstone, alternately blessing and burdening its wearers. One of
Adichie's greatest gifts is her ability to sketch the lives of her
characters (mostly women), and to limn the differences between
Nigeria and the United States with a few telling details. . . . A
lesser author would take the easy road of broadly painting these
cultural differences so that one culture came across as superior to
the other, but Adichie seldom falls into this trap. Her expatriates
miss Nigeria even as they criticize the way that women are treated
there and come to enjoy certain aspects of American culture despite
the difficulties of assimilation. The two strongest stories, 'On
Monday of Last Week' and 'Jumping Monkey Hill,' probe even deeper
by creating complex characters who address these issues head-on,
with nary a shred of didacticism or spoon-fed multiculturalism in
sight. . . . 'On Monday of Last Week' expertly juggles weighty
themes by focusing on character rather than trying to deliver a
message. Likewise, 'Jumping Monkey Hill' uses a sophisticated
structure and finely drawn characters to convey the power politics
at play in the African writing community."
–BookBrowse Recommends
"An assured and insightful voice whose work can stand alone . . .
Adichie' s prose is unflinching, eschewing metaphor for the simple
power of calling a thing as it is. . . . The best [stories] are
disquieting for their lack of resolution, ending on the inhale
rather than the exhale. Ultimately, The Thing Around Your Neck is
less a tour of postcolonial scars than it is about humans who bang
into each other on their way to getting what they want. In this
way, Adichie follows in the footsteps of Jhumpa Lahiri."
–Erin Adair-Hodges, Weekly Alibi (Albuquerque, NM)
"As richly modulated as MacArthur fellow Adichie's hard-hitting
novels are, her short stories are equally well-tooled and potent.
As her first collection arcs between Nigeria and the U. S., Adichie
takes measure of the divide between men and women and different
classes and cultures. A meticulous observer of tactile detail and
emotional nuance, Adichie moves sure-footedly from the personal to
the communal as she illuminates with striking immediacy the
consequences of prejudice, corruption, tyranny, and violence in
war-torn Nigeria and unaware America. . . . Adichie's graceful and
slicing stories of characters struggling with fear, anger, and
sorrow beautifully capture the immense resonance of small things as
the larger world pitches into incoherence."
–Donna Seaman, Booklist
"A fine new collection . . . set in both the United States and
Nigeria, where things continue to fall apart. A privileged college
student gets involved in gang violence; innocent women flee from a
bloody riot; some characters are visited by ghosts, while others
are haunted by the memory of war. Yet as one character puts it, an
easier life in the United States is cushioned by so much
convenience that it feels sterile. Relations between the races are
awkward at best. . . . Adichie, a brilliant writer whose characters
stay with you for a long time, deserves to be more widely
known."
–Leslie Patterson, Library Journal
"The title of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection
intrigues even before you open the covers. . . . Adichie has
written of gang violence and police brutality in her native
Nigeria, of deceived wives and old men remembering the Biafran war,
and of a Muslim and a Christian woman forming a momentary bond
while religious riots rage outside their hiding place. Adichie's
spare, poised prose, the coolness of her phrasing, ensures these
scenes are achieved without melodrama. And though she writes very
specifically about Nigeria, the stories have a universal
application. . . . The Thing Around Your Neck explores myriad
tensions between new world and old. . . . [Adichie's] tales explore
an array of power struggles, and often the story's kick comes from
the shifting of that power, the moment of realization or choice
that will result in changed lives. It's the hint at these lives
beyond the final lines that reminds one of what a good novelist
Adichie is. There are many characters you would like to travel with
further."
–Isobel Dixon, Financial Times
"Adichie, a classic storyteller, expertly limns the lives of
Nigerian women and their families, both in their mother country and
in their adopted U. S."
–Ms.
"A dozen stories about the lives of Nigerians at home and in
America from the winner of the Orange Broadband Prize. In the five
tales set in the United States, Adichie profiles characters both
drawn to America and cautious of assimilation . . . The very fine
'Jumping Monkey Hill' and the title story both show Nigerian women
confronting white expectations. . . . Insightful and
illuminating."
–Kirkus Reviews
"Extremely rewarding . . . Adichie's growth into one of the
language' s most powerful storytellers is palpable [as her]
language ascends to the level of the best writers, both compressed
to a minute grain, and yet expansive in the way only finely wrought
short stories can be. . . . The integrity of the author, as she
tackles the core morality of [her themes], is in full evidence. We
can clearly see where her strengths, in style and content, ought to
lead her in the future. This is both the roadmap of an unfolding
major career, as well as a view of the library which got her
here."
–Anis Shivani, Brooklyn Rail
"I have a thing for short stories that lend insight into the lives
of immigrants caught between two cultures. My favorite writers in
this category have been Jhumpa Lahiri and Sana Krasikov. Now I'm
adding the Nigerian-born Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. [The Thing
Around Your Neck] is beautifully written and heartbreaking. I'm
halfway through it. I want to race through it because each story so
far has been so powerful. And yet I want to go slowly, to savor her
bringing me over to Nigeria and then back to the US, getting a
glimpse of what it' s like to be stuck in the middle, between the
old and the new, the home of the heart and the home of the
future."
–Jan Gardner, The Boston Globe Off the Shelf blog
"This stunning collection confirms Adichie's position as one of
Africa's brightest new literary stars. She is the author of two
important novels about the Igbo people of Nigeria . . . yet her
writing is even more poignant when applied to the short story:
crisp, succinct, vigorous and loaded. . . . These slice-of-life
stories straddle both [America and Nigeria] and dissect the
imbalance of power and moral corruption in a wide range of
relationships and settings. The first story, 'Cell One,' shows a
descent into lawlessness and police brutality that we've come to
expect depicted in Nigerian literature. Yet in Adichie's hands it
is seen afresh. The writer's cool, intelligent, observant, female
antennae are sensitive to the subtleties of how people behave, and
why, in this story about the interplay of motherhood and teenage
waywardness. . . . It is to Adichie's credit that her writing is so
understated that at the end of the story the reader is left to
imagine what happens rather than being force-fed the gory details.
Her endings are always unpredictable and suspenseful. In 'A Private
Experience' two women take refuge in a shack in the middle of a
riot . . . Their brief interaction affirms the power of humanity to
resist and survive tribal warfare. All Adichie's stories are
suffused with evocative atmospheric detail. . . . While there is a
sense of anger at the injustices that Nigerians have to endure in
their home country, these stories also question whether life in the
US is any better. Many of the immigrants' stories are driven by
loneliness and alienation and some do decide to return home–for
better or worse. Adichie offers insights into both worlds and, like
all fine storytellers, leaves us wanting more."
–Bernardine Evaristo, The Times (London)
"Confirms [Adichie's] status as a first-rate storyteller. In the
sublime title story, a young Nigerian émigré, a winner of an
American visa lottery, expresses her choking loneliness as she
scrapes for a living and for love in Connecticut . . . These
sparkling stories explore loneliness, identity, violence, betrayal,
middle-class obsessions, the bond between parents and children, and
the emigrant and colonial experiences. [Adichie] casts a fearless
and caustic eye on the corruption that Nigerians endured under a
military dictatorship and on what she perceives to be the
fatuousness of the American way of life. . . . Fans of Adichie's
novels won't be disappointed, because each of the 12 short stories
in this book is a mini-novel to which readers can add their own
twists, turns and outcomes."
–Irish Independent
"Adichie's [stories] are as nuanced and well written as any I've
encountered in recent years. You'll be entertained, enlightened and
come away a better person after reading this collection that
toggles between [Nigeria and the U. S.], the clash of cultures, the
divides between men and women and the different social classes in
both countries. . . . ['The American Embassy'] will enlighten and
touch you more than a dozen news stories. . . . The humor in ['On
Monday of Last Week'] is nuanced and brilliantly demonstrates the
versatility of the author. . . . Another story suffused with
comedy, 'Jumping Monkey Hill,' brings together a diverse group of
Africans in a writer's conference in South Africa [and is] a story
that will resonate with writers and possibly members of book
groups. I've already decided that The Thing Around Your Neck
belongs on my list of notable books of 2009. If you want short
stories that you'll remember for a long time, read this collection.
You'll find yourself rereading the stories, to catch the subtleties
you may have missed the first time around, to glory in the work of
a young writer who has mastered a difficult art form."
–David M. Kinchen, Huntingtonnews.net (West Virginia)
"There is an understated beauty to Adichie's deceptively simple
prose: it remains cool, dispassionate and controlled, and leads you
easily through unfamiliar and unexpected scenarios. . . . The
Nigerian stories, and 'Ghosts' in particular, offer windows on
experience that radiate with compassion. . . . There is a lyrical
ache in this simple tale that recalls Gabriel García Márquez's
beautiful novella Nobody Writes To The Colonel–quite an achievement
for such a young writer."
–Metro (UK)
"Superb. With minimal fuss [these stories] present snapshots of
Nigerian life. . . . The title story tracks the life of a young
woman sent to the US by her family . . . It is memorably,
heartbreakingly sad . . . Both as a person and a writer, [Adichie]
is engaged in an ongoing project of rebellion against the
expectations of others–of those who want to be able to tell her
what the world is like, and what her place in it should be."
–William Skidelsky, The Observer
"The strains and betrayals involved in fleeing one culture for
another figure prominently [in The Thing Around Your Neck] with the
uprooted heroines caught between the devil of a dysfunctional
homeland and the deep blue sea of suburban America. Adichie has a
flair for drama, particularly where violence is involved. Not too
many writers could carry off a beheading with [her] confident,
mid-sentence insouciance . . . The writing throughout the book has
a verve that propels you forward through its pages. The polarities
Adichie explores– Africa/America, black/white, male/female,
master/servant–are very efficiently laid out, gridded over each
other in unexpected ways, with power and weakness constantly
switching positions. And a pervasive, lightly mocking intelligence
gives the whole thing a lively, satirical edge."
–James Lasdun, The Guardian
"Adichie grew up in Nigeria; she now lives in the United States.
Several stories in her new book engineer a kind of moralizing
comedy by viewing one country from the perspective of the other. .
. . An elegant collection. From beginning to end the prose is
serene and the characterization deft."
–Anthony Cummins, The Times Literary Supplement
"A vivid new collection by Adichie . . . In the tense and dramatic
'A Private Experience,' two women, a young Christian Igbo girl from
Lagos and a poor Muslim Hausa woman from the north, take refuge
from a street riot in an empty shop and share lessons in survival.
'Ghosts' [is] an accomplished and powerful story about honour and
regret [that] sounds a long sad chord from the small world of the
elderly, gently gathering wider implications into its brief
compass. . . . [The stories set in America are] full of telling
contrasts between the new world and 'home.' . . . The most
sophisticated story in the collection is 'Jumping Monkey Hill,'
which features an old English post-colonial couple who run an
African writers' workshop outside Cape Town. [It] has a wryly
humorous story within a story, and ends, like many of the tales
here, with the protagonist walking away from compromise. Whether in
the land of the free or under military rule, women are the main
victims–of casual lechery, arranged marriages, cheating husbands
and violence. When women talk to each other they share more than
gossip and information; they are bound together in powerlessness.
The long final story, 'The Headstrong Historian,' a compact tragic
family saga, ends on a faint note of hope with an educated
granddaughter. . . .With its warm and sympathetic heroines and its
finely cadenced prose, this collection demonstrates that [Adichie]
is keeping faith with her talent and with her country."
–Lindsay Duguid, The Sunday Times (London)
"The success of [Half of a Yellow Sun] cemented Adichie's status as
an incredibly gifted storyteller and her stories add further
confirmation. Adichie's work is reminiscent of that of novelists
Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri in that her fiction is largely concerned
with the clash of cultures and the immigrant experience in America.
Like the author's life this collection is divided between America
and her west African homeland. Each is a perfect nugget, telling a
complete story in some 20 pages. Simple but beautiful, the stories
tackle everything from corrupt police and riots to infidelity and
arranged marriages. While she writes of Nigeria with affection,
Adichie never sees it through rose-tinted spectacles. . . . The
stories are compelling and diverse but make up a mere 218
pages–leaving the reader wanting more from this major African
talent."
–Lianne Kolirin, Daily Express (UK)
"A fortunate few writers possess the rare but unmistakable quality
of inspiring a reader's confidence within a few sentences. It is a
curious, almost unliterary trait: like meeting a person whom one
knows is going to become a friend. The secret is not one of content
or style (though Adichie is a stylist of deceptively effortless
grace who seems to manipulate language almost invisibly, so that it
is only later that her careful craftsmanship becomes apparent). Her
particular gift is the seductive ability to tell a story. Adichie's
narratives have something of the compelling allure– at once
intimate and strange–of a crossed telephone line. It is as though
the reader has dropped into the lives of her young women (the
majority of her narrators are young and female) and become
immediately absorbed into their imagined world. . . . Her
characters have the power of archetypes and the verisimilitude that
comes from fine observation. . . . Adichie writes with an economy
and precision that makes the strange seem familiar. She makes
storytelling seem as easy as birdsong."
–Jane Shilling, The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Almost every story [in The Thing Around Your Neck], in the way
only the most satisfying short stories manage, holds the kernel of
something bigger in its fist yet is simultaneously a fully
realised, standalone entity. They don't aspire to be novels–that
would be a bad thing–but they hum with potential. I longed to know
more about each struggling, grieving character as I turned the last
page of each compact and uncompromising tale. And I mean that as a
compliment. Adichie is already, at the age of 31, a formidable
voice in contemporary west African literature, described by
Nigerian heavyweight Chinua Achebe as 'a writer endowed with the
gift of ancient storytellers.' In the title story that gift is
skilfully employed in her use of the second person tense, not
easily pulled off . . . Even when describing something horrific,
Adichie remains dispassionate and the control and distance she
maintains are what make her such a good writer. . . . At its best
Adichie's prose can be breathtaking in the most literal, physical
sense. . . . In both [the U. S. and Africa], Adichie's
preoccupation is with class, and this is why her voice is so
refreshing. Her interests lie in middle class Nigeria and the
diaspora, and she tugs us out of the one-dimensional representation
of Africa–the poverty, disease and civil war–that we are usually
fed."
–Chitra Ramaswamy, Scotland on Sunday
Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun) stays on familiar turf in her deflated first story collection. The tension between Nigerians and Nigerian-Americans, and the question of what it means to be middle-class in each country, feeds most of these dozen stories. Best known are "Cell One," and "The Headstrong Historian," which have both appeared in the New Yorker and are the collection's finest works. "Cell One," in particular, about the appropriation of American ghetto culture by Nigerian university students, is both emotionally and intellectually fulfilling. Most of the other stories in this collection, while brimming with pathos and rich in character, are limited. The expansive canvas of the novel suits Adichie's work best; here, she fixates mostly on romantic relationships. Each story's observations illuminate once; read in succession, they take on a repetitive slice-of-life quality, where assimilation and gender roles become ready stand-ins for what could be more probing work. (June) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
"Affecting . . . The Africa in Adichie's collection isn't the
Africa that Americans are familiar with from TV news or newspaper
headlines. Her stories are not about civil war or government
corruption or deadly illnesses. She is interested in how clashes
between tradition and modernity, familial expectations and imported
dreams affect relationships between husbands and wives, parents and
children.
In these stories, which take place in Nigeria and the United
States, questions of belonging and loyalty are multiplied several
times over. Her characters, many of whom grew up in Nigeria and
emigrated (or saw their relatives emigrate) to America, find
themselves unmoored, many stumbling into danger or confusion.
Rather than becoming cosmopolitan members of a newly globalized
world, they tend to feel dislocated on two continents and caught on
the margins of two cultures that are themselves in a rapid state of
flux. . . . The most powerful stories in this volume depict
immensely complicated, conflicted characters, many of [whom] have
experienced the random perils of life firsthand. . . . Adichie
demonstrates that she is adept at conjuring the unending personal
ripples created by political circumstance, at conjuring both the
'hard, obvious' facts of history, and 'the soft, subtle things that
lodge themselves into the soul.'"
-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Haunting . . . In the first of these 12 stories set in Nigeria and
the U. S., a spoiled college student doing a stint in a Nigerian
prison finds he can't keep silent when the police harass an elderly
inmate. In another, what seems like an excellent arranged marriage
is doomed once the bride joins her husband in Brooklyn and learns
he's an overbearing bore. And for the lonely narrator of the title
story, falling in love means 'the thing that wrapped itself around
your neck, that nearly choked you before you fell asleep,' is
finally loosened. Adichie, a Nigerian who has studied in the U. S.,
writes with wisdom and compassion about her countrymen's
experiences as foreigners, both in America and in their changing
homeland. Here is one of fiction's most compelling new voices."
-Vick Boughton, People, A People Pick
"Imagine how hard it must be to write stories that make American
readers understand what it might be like to visit a brother in a
Nigerian jail, to be the new bride in an arranged marriage, to
arrive in Flatbush from Lagos to meet a husband or to hide in a
basement, waiting for a riot to subside, wondering what happened to
a little sister who let go of your hand when you were running. How
would it feel to be a woman who smuggled her journalist husband out
of Nigeria one day and had her 4-year-old son shot by government
thugs the next? If reading stories can make you feel . . . caught
between two worlds and frightened, what would it be like to live
them? This is Adichie's third book, and it is fascinating. . . .
Characters (many in their teens and early 20s) feel a yanking on
invisible collars as they try to strike out on their own.
Sometimes, ties are cut by distance, leaving a protagonist
disoriented and alone . . . Sometimes a lie or a death cuts the
lines of trust that tie a character to the world they inhabit. Most
of Adichie's characters are alone, adrift in a strange physical or
emotional landscape. . . . These characters feel invisible, erased.
They can't go home. They want to melt into America. What would it
be like to feel that sinister thing, memory, around your neck?
Perhaps you can imagine after all."
-Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Don't let Adichie's highbrow resume scare you away from her
accessible and compelling short-story collection. Yes, the
31-year-old Nigerian writer won a 2008 MacArthur Genius award. But
unlike many literary authors, she eschews pretentious obscurity in
favor of clarity. In these stories set both in Nigeria and in the
USA, she touches on religion, corruption, Nigeria's civil war and
living in America as a lonely African wife. Mostly, however, she
creates indelible characters who jump off the page and into your
head and heart."
-Deirdre Donahue, USA Today"Wonderfully crafted . . . Prose this
skillful deserves international acclaim. Insightful, powerful and
brimming with characters that seem to leap from the printed page,
this collection is nothing less than a literary feast."
-Larry Cox, Tucson Citizen
"The tensions embodied in [the story 'Jumping Monkey Hill']-between
fiction and autobiography, the expectations of the observer and the
experience of the witness, not to mention the value of certain
experiences in the global literary marketplace-practically seep
through the pages of this collection. As a whole it traces the
journey Adichie herself has taken. . . . All [her] personhoods are
represented here: the sheltered child, the vulnerable immigrant in
Philadelphia and Brooklyn, the foreign student adrift in a
dormitory in Princeton, the young African writer asked to objectify
herself for an uncomprehending audience. . . . 'Ghosts,' in which
an elderly professor in Nsukka meets an old colleague he assumed
had died in the Biafran war, is a nearly perfect story, distilling
a lifetime's weariness and wicked humor into a few pages. 'Tomorrow
Is Too Far,' a kind of ghostless ghost story, delves beautifully
into the layers of deception around a young boy's accidental death
. . . And there is a whole suite of stories in which Adichie calmly
eviscerates the pretensions of Westerners whose interest in Africa
masks an acquisitive, self-flattering venality. . . . Adichie is
keenly aware of the particular burdens that come with literary
success for an immigrant writer, a so-called hyphenated American.
Though she strikes a tricky balance-exposing, while also at times
playing on, her audience's prejudices-one comes away from The Thing
Around Your Neck heartened by her self-awareness and
unpredictability. She knows what it means to sit at the table, and
also what it takes to walk away."
-Jess Row, The New York Times Book Review
"Adichie belongs to the rare group of young writers whose wisdom
sets them apart from writers of their age. . . . The Thing Around
Your Neck once again showcases her insights into human nature under
social, ethical, cultural as well as personal dilemmas. . . . In
her notes about novel writing, Elizabeth Bowen emphasized both the
unpredictability and the inevitability of a character's actions.
Adichie' s best stories are perfect examples of her masterful
perception of these seemingly conflicting qualities within human
nature. I hesitate to use 'create,' as Adichie' s characters don't
feel as though they were merely created; rather, it is as if they
were invited into the stories by the most understanding hostess,
and their dilemmas, pains and secrets were then related to us by
the hostess, who seems to understand the characters better than
they understand themselves, who does not judge them, and who treats
them with respect and love and empathy that perhaps they would
never have allowed themselves to imagine. . . . Reading ['On Monday
of Last Week'] is like taking a journey of having one's heart
broken in a foreign land, yet it is not the foreignness of the land
that brings the pain but the foreignness in any human heart. . . In
this and a few other stories about Nigerian women who have found
themselves in America, Adichie transcends the norm of immigrants'
stories and give the characters complexities that would be absent
in a less masterful storyteller. . . . 'The Headstrong Historian,'
a story that encompasses four generations of women (and men),
achieves what a short story rarely does, with a symphonic quality
that one would only hope to see in a master's stories, like those
of Tolstoy. . . . Together these stories once again prove that
Adichie is one of those rare writers that any country or any
continent would feel proud to claim as its own."
-Yiyun Li, San Francisco Chronicle
"Haunting . . . Adichie deploys her calm, deceptive prose to
portray women in Nigeria and America who are forced to match their
wits against threats ranging from marauding guerillas to microwave
ovens. . . . The devastating final piece, 'The Headstrong
Historian,' seems to carry the whole history of a continent in its
bones: tragic, defiant, revelatory."
-Michael Lindgren, The Washington Post
"Like those of Jhumpa Lahiri, whose work bears a notable
resemblance to Adichie's, the characters of The Thing Around Your
Neck are caught between past and present, original and adopted
homelands. . . . America is a land of yoga classes, drive-through
banks, and copious supermarket carts, but it is also a surprisingly
unsatisfactory promised land . . . a place where half-truths and
buried secrets that form a life are ruthlessly exposed. [Here also
is] Nigerian life seen from the outside: the perspective of the
American immigrant, the memory tourist, the second-class gender.
They are the stories of those whose tales are not told. Adichie
deftly accesses the privileged mindsets of her Nigerian characters,
who stubbornly insist on believing that they are to be protected
from the worst. . . . Her Americans are outsiders clamoring to be
let into society; her upper-class Nigerians are insiders clamoring
to be let out of history. 'It would have been so easy for him,'
[one] narrator observes on the occasion of her brother's release
from prison, 'to make a sleek drama of his story, but he did not.'
Nor does Adichie, who prefers ambiguity, and a certain abruptness
of tone, to the carefully raked garden paths of other writers. . .
. Whether these stories reflect the writer's own experiences, only
Adichie knows. That they reflect the lives of her countrymen, there
can be no doubt."
-Saul Austerlitz, Boston Sunday Globe
"There are various ways writers can be ambitious, but in our era
they are often judged to be so only if their prose is complex,
elusive, and somewhat arcane. The Nigerian writer Adichie is an
exception to this 'rule.' She's a deeply ambitious and justly
celebrated writer whose prose is lucid and whose narrative method
is simple and straightforward. Indeed, the 12 clearly told tales
that make up The Thing Around Your Neck resonate powerfully because
of their thematic depth and their author's ability to understand
and reveal her characters. [The collection] explores the frequently
troubled lives of Nigerians in their native country as well as
those trying to adapt to life in America. Often these stories
involve a conflict between personal fulfillment and political
commitment and/or fidelity to one's roots. . . . The theme of the
displaced African, confused and alienated in America in an almost
Alice in Wonderland-like way, recurs in a number of these stories.
. . . While Adichie's vision of America is often bitterly comic and
sometimes scathing, she is equally, if not more, critical of the
injustice and violence that pervades Nigeria. 'Cell One,' for
example, is a kind of broken family romance told from the
daughter's point of view that centers on the increasingly dangerous
behavior of her 17-year-old brother. [It] is, perhaps, the most
successful instance of Adichie' s enriching her story by adding a
social dimension to it, maintaining all the while a fine balance
between the personal and political. . . . While many of her
characters are suffused with sorrow, they also generally evolve
enough to make decisions that can help their lives. . . . For
Adichie, hope lies in taking action, as indeed she herself did in
writing this poignant, compelling book."
-Richard Burgin, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Wicked . . . While [Adichie's] work is never without its political
undertones-can any novel about Africa ever be entirely
apolitical?-her primary purpose is literary, not doctrinal. Her
work does not buckle under its political burden, but supports it
with a great humanity. . . . Adichie excels at the depiction of
complicated relationships, familial and romantic . . . Many of the
stories [in The Thing Around Your Neck] focus on recent
immigrants-young women who have come to America for different
reasons, usually romantic-who must negotiate sexual politics along
with cultural politics. The gulf between expectations and realities
among these characters is unsurprising . . . But Adichie reveals it
in unexpected ways, in a language that preserves the African-ness
of her characters while adding their stories to the long history of
immigrants in America. . . . These characters are close enough to
American society to observe it well, but distant enough to maintain
a mordant and sometimes biting perspective. . . .[Adichie's]
language is recognizably Chinua Achebe's: the transposition of Igbo
expressions and proverbs into English, the dispassionate portrayal
of both traditional religion and Christianity. And the message as
well: the reclamation of African culture from colonialist writers
whose texts were predicated on racist assumptions, subtle or
blatant, and from an educational system in which children read
stories depicting members of their own race as uncultured savages,
and Europeans as the bears of wisdom. But Adichie has gone beyond,
or away from, Achebe in an important way: she is optimistic. She
may have grown up on Enid Blyton, but in her lifetime, she has
already seen things that fall apart begin to come back together."
-Ruth Franklin, The New Republic
"Powerful . . . Arresting. The distilled world of the short story
suits Adichie beautifully: She shows a rare talent for finding the
images and gestures that etch a narrative moment unforgettably in
the reader's memory. . . . Many of the characters in the book
divide their time between Nigeria and the United States. A very
solid collection, [one that] resonates with an aching undercurrent
of dislocation and loss of identity. . . Exquisite stories that
will take you to places you didn' t know existed."
-Mary Brennan, The Seattle Times
"Powerful, deftly assembled . . . Adichie's gifts as a storyteller
[are all] on display . . . The backgrounds of her characters may
initially seem exotic to Western readers. And yet the love,
justice, and understanding they seek are so fundamental and
familiar that there are few readers of any background who won't
recognize acres-perhaps even miles-of common ground. Here,
Adichie's characters are as likely to inhabit Hartford or Princeton
as they are Nsukka or Lagos. . . . But all in some way are in a
state of loss. . . . For most of them, there is a loss of
wholeness, thrust upon them by both the discomfort of their own
country and the powerful pull of Western culture, into whose orbit
they seem constantly to be sucked, whether they have ever actually
set foot outside Nigeria or not. . . . Adichie's gift to readers in
this book is to give voice to some of the forms of Nigerian
heartbreak that Westerners might not otherwise hear. But despite
the deep hurt that ripples through these stories, the characters
never shout out their sadness. If they are alive, they know they
are fortunate. If they are sad, they hold it within. Wisely,
Adichie mostly keeps away from politics. Her stories are not a
condemnation of the West or the US. Instead, Adichie gives us what
a first-rate writer should: a keen yet poignant view of the
contradictions of the human condition."
-Marjorie Kehe, The Christian Science Monitor
"Remarkable . . . I congratulate you on this book. It is so moving
and powerful-each of these stories you have written."
-Diane Rehm, "The Diane Rehm Show," National Public Radio
"These 12 well-written short stories are provocative in their
portrayal of women and men in crisis, and satisfying in their
finality. . . . A finely crafted, compelling and satisfying set of
stories."
-Lois D. Atwood, The Providence Journal "The immigrant experience,
that endlessly complicated balancing act between longing for
acceptance and resisting pressure to just shut up and be grateful
for your green card, is rich terrain for fiction that explores the
tensions that arise where politics and the personal intersect. The
celebrated writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 31, knows this terrain
well. . . . In the dozen stories in The Thing Around Your Neck,
Adichie writes with great sensitivity of the struggles of Nigerian
immigrants to forge an identity in the modern world without
discarding the values of their culture of origin. Violence casts a
long shadow over the collection. A few stories explore the
frustration of trying to make an arranged marriage work in a new
country. [One character says of America,] 'It forces egalitarianism
on you. You have nobody to talk to, really, except for your
toddlers, so you turn to your housegirl. And before you know it,
she is your friend. Your equal.' Virginia Woolf could not have said
it better. . . . Whether they live in Nigeria or the U. S., the
women in Adichie's stories do not have it easy. One thing they do
have, though, is brains. Their suffering is all the more poignant
because, deep down, they know the price you pay for not doing what
you want in life is incalculable."
-Conan Putnam, Chicago Tribune
"You know it when you see it: the ability to conjure whole lives,
times, places, worlds in a few deft splashes of prose, Picassoesque
line drawings of the mind, without resort to attitudinal or
perspectival gambits, language games, postmodern devices. Plenty of
people have recognized the sure-handed literary classicism of
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Now comes a dozen
stories, half set in Nigeria and-in a creative departure for
Adichie-the other half in America. The characters in the stories
set stateside are stymied by home ties and bemused by America. The
coloration and vigor [in those stories] rarely pale, and Adichie's
supple talents are on full display in her African tales, which
never fail to touch the universal in the particular experience of
the aging revolutionary professor, the fallen bourgeois golden boy,
the shopping-crazy gal caught up in a marketplace massacre. Like
most of us-but perhaps more so-Adichie's imagination seems fired by
nostalgia for a lost childhood world at least as much as by the
challenges of the ever-moving present tense that has swept it so
unceremoniously, irretrievably away."
-Ben Dickinson, Elle
"The stories in The Thing Around Your Neck are so exquisite they
grab you by the throat and stop your heart."
-Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
"Bold, fearless, and completely unapologetic . . . Many of the
book's main characters are women, women who are filled with
longing, regret, sadness. The men in their lives are a
disappointment; America is an even bigger one. . . . The immigrants
who come here are stifled, they have to make great sacrifices, huge
compromises. . . . A few of the stories in the collection even
feature gay characters, a no-no in African literature . . .
Adichie' s biting humor shines through in the tale 'Jumping Monkey
Hill.'"
-Lola Ogunnaike, "African Voices," CNN International
"Adichie embodies a literary cosmopolitanism as expansive and
mellifluous as her name: she offers tales that make world
literature from American fictions. . . . In The Thing Around Your
Neck, [she] maps narrative possibilities for examining postcolonial
Nigeria, the haunting ramifications of civil war and
government-sanctioned terrorism, and the aching process of
immigrant acclimation to the United States. . . . In stories like
'Ghosts' and the outstanding title story, Adichie suggests that
what lies ahead or abroad [for Nigerians] may not offer protections
from history's indignities. . . . Adichie displays strong control
of the short form. . . . 'The Headstrong Historian' is a perfect
representation of the author's great imagination and skills . . .
Adichie's abilities to compress and drive the narrative dazzle
us."
-Walter Muyumba, The Dallas Morning News
"Fiercely sympathetic tales of Nigerian expatriates who find
themselves alienated on both continents."
-Megan O'Grady, Vogue
"Beautifully crafted . . . As Baltasar Gracian, a 17th-century
Spanish writer, once wrote, 'Good things, when short, are twice as
good.' This compressed kind of pleasure is abundantly evident in
[The Thing Around Your Neck]. Adichie has attracted a lot of
attention in her relatively short career . . . This book will show
you why."
-Robert L. Pincus, San Diego Union-Tribune
"Packing a full world into a few paragraphs is precisely the short
storyteller's challenge, the task Adichie has set for herself in
this [collection]. This young Nigerian writer proves herself worthy
of the challenge, building a rich universe in both broad and subtle
strokes. . . . Certainly [these stories are] strong enough to stand
alone. But the cumulative effect for an American reading them is a
history lesson injected with emotional immediacy. Adichie examines
lives interrupted by the onset of civil war in the late 1960s. She
dramatizes the anxiety of Nigerians waiting to hear if their loved
ones were aboard the plane that crashed after takeoff from Lagos in
2004 and killed everyone on board. . . . Adichie's final story,
'The Headstrong Historian,' is well-placed. It offers a reckoning
of Nigerian history in the character of Afamefuna, whose
understanding of her grandmother's life provides insight into her
own education and upbringing away from the tribe. . . .
Haunting."
-Maggie Galehouse, Houston Chronicle
"Half of a Yellow Sun was the kind of protean work that
seemed impossible to follow. . . . The Thing Around Your Neck has
[the same] lyricism in common with her last book, but rather than
being focused on the past, it brings contemporary issues of
politics and immigration into sharp focus. . . . The most
successful stories in the book concern problems of immigration and
shine an often harsh light on America and Americans while
portraying the seemingly contradictory love affair the world
continues to have with our life and customs. . . . Her view of
Africans is no less unsparing. . . . Adichie' s narrators have in
common the diction of outsiders, always standing apart from others,
even those with whom they might claim solidarity. . . . What's on
display in these stories is a fierce imagination and dazzling use
of language that marks Adichie as a writer of impressive reach and
achievement. . . . There's no question that this is a writer to
watch, one from whom we can expect great things in the future."
-David Milofsky, The Denver Post
"Nigeria has produced such talented writers as Wole Soyinka and
Chinua Achebe. To that list we can now add Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie, whose accomplished collection, The Thing Around Your Neck,
further burnishes her considerable reputation. . . . She makes
observations of the immigrant experience that are affectingly
acute. . . . These are powerful stories by a masterful writer that
perceptively evoke the less celebrated aspects of immigration-loss
of place, familiar comforts and unquestioning acceptance by
others-as well as of the toll of pervasive authoritarianism back
home."
-Judith Chettle, Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Compelling, often emotionally wrenching . . . Intriguing . . .
Adichie writes of the immigrant's experience of coming to the U. S.
from Nigeria and the social and physical consequences that precede
and follow. . . . A revealing outsider's view of America appears in
many of these stories . . . Adichie deftly pulls much from her
native country's troubled past and present, turning it into high
and intimate drama . . . Adichie's stories show more of the
difficulties and less of the pleasures of everyday life in Nigeria
and what it means to leave that life for America: Neither choice is
easy, both have dangers. . . . Her words and stories are insightful
and provocative and tell us much about the human experience in
difficult times."
-Jim Carmin, The Oregonian
"These 12 stories by Nigerian-born Adichie provide a wise and
minutely observed update of the American-immigrant experience. Her
narrators, most young African women, navigate the exotic terrain of
New Jersey and Pennsylvania, their perceptions sharpened by
homesickness. Macy' s, for instance, can take on the eerie grandeur
of an imperial palace."
-Jed Lipinski, The Village Voice
"Dazzling . . . Witty . . . One of the finest [collections]
ever written by an African writer. . . . Like [Chinua] Achebe,
Adichie is an astonishing Ibo writer who grew up in eastern
Nigeria, but unlike her literary parent, Adichie has veered off
into territory that is often remarkably different from Achebe's.
Moreover, her worldview has been indelibly shaped by her gender . .
. Adichie [has] emerged as a strong voice, worthy of our attention.
. . . One of the most original of these stories, 'The Headstrong
Historian,' reveals why so many of her readers believe Adichie is
Achebe reborn. . . . But then once Adichie has got us hooked, she
steps into her own shoes and takes the reader on a trip that I
doubt even Achebe (for all his brilliance) would have ever
imagined. What a delicious surprise. [Adichie] hasn't eliminated
her literary father but she has discovered her own territory. [This
story] heralds not only her own voice but her genuine craft as a
writer of prose narratives. . . . There's no telling where she'll
go next."
-Charles R. Larson, CounterPunch
"Ask most Americans what they know about Nigeria and they may be
hard-pressed to mention anything beyond oil production and scams on
the Internet. Adichie knows far more, and her writing about her
homeland and its emigrants to America illuminates this powerful
African country. The Thing Around Your Neck focus[es] mainly on
middle-class Nigerians struggling with issues of love, class, war,
homeland and loneliness [and it] offers a window on a country and a
people that Americans would do well to understand better. . . .
Many of the stories involve Nigerian women caught between old
country customs and new world ways, whether in their home country
or as immigrants to America. Adichie, whose prose is both precise
and evocative, gracefully shows us how the particulars of their
experiences fit into the universal struggles of women the world
over."
-Carole Goldberg, The Hartford Courant
"Absorbing . . . The Thing Around Your Neck revolves around
questions of identity in an era of globalization. We live in a
world of ethnic neighborhoods with hazy geographic borders, a world
of immigration, diasporas, and hybridizations. The 'things' hanging
around all of our necks are complicated strands of social,
cultural, religious, and historical roots that gradually weave into
the core of one's self. [Adichie's] fiction furnishes a wider
panorama of life, including but surpassing the political. . . .
Adichie's lyrically written stories frequently depict the elements
of competing religious perspectives that are such a central part of
Nigerian life today. . . . Faith is a central part of what it means
to be a global citizen in today's flat world. Adichie's potent
fiction helps us to recognize the truth and the lies, the
connections and the divisions, that characterize our time."
-Susan Vanzanten, Books & Culture
"The master storyteller weaves a dozen insightful tales set in
war-ravaged Nigeria and America, where violence continues to
escalate."
-Allen Pierleoni, San Luis Obispo Tribune
"Whether [Adichie's] characters are finding trouble in their home
country of Nigeria or as immigrants in America, they all face
difficulties in establishing themselves as a known commodity and
figuring out where they stand within the socio-economic and social
system in which they are living. Adichie writes deeply but without
being overbearing. [Her] writing lacks pretension and avoids the
plea for emotion that leads many of today's writers to create
melodramatic novels of heartbreak and loss. Instead, Adichie
achieves an understated emotional rawness which leads to powerful
fiction."
-Moira Phillips, Charleston City Paper
"Searching . . . Adichie displays a deft feel for the texture of
violence. . . . This collection [is] concerned with how large
forces-violence, tradition, immigration, colonialism-shape and
determine individual lives. . . . The emotional weight of The Thing
Around Your Neck derives from the feeling of ambivalence about
opportunity in America and the chaos of modern Nigeria that's built
up through the whole collection- the real 'thing' around the
characters' necks . . . Adichie, who splits time between Nigeria
and the U. S., has likened America to 'a very rich uncle,' and her
stories are infused with the curiosity, admiration, and aloofness
characterizing that perspective. . . . Adichie [has a] feel for the
traditional sensations of Nigerian life, the fragrant jacaranda
blossoms, warm harmattan breeze and 'yellow-bellied bees' that buzz
in the afternoon."
-Kevin Hartnett, Paste Magazine
"In Adichie's meticulously detailed stories of Nigerians at home
and abroad, national identity functions as both a pendant and a
millstone, alternately blessing and burdening its wearers. One of
Adichie's greatest gifts is her ability to sketch the lives of her
characters (mostly women), and to limn the differences between
Nigeria and the United States with a few telling details. . . . A
lesser author would take the easy road of broadly painting these
cultural differences so that one culture came across as superior to
the other, but Adichie seldom falls into this trap. Her expatriates
miss Nigeria even as they criticize the way that women are treated
there and come to enjoy certain aspects of American culture despite
the difficulties of assimilation. The two strongest stories, 'On
Monday of Last Week' and 'Jumping Monkey Hill,' probe even deeper
by creating complex characters who address these issues head-on,
with nary a shred of didacticism or spoon-fed multiculturalism in
sight. . . . 'On Monday of Last Week' expertly juggles weighty
themes by focusing on character rather than trying to deliver a
message. Likewise, 'Jumping Monkey Hill' uses a sophisticated
structure and finely drawn characters to convey the power politics
at play in the African writing community."
-BookBrowse Recommends
"An assured and insightful voice whose work can stand
alone . . . Adichie' s prose is unflinching, eschewing metaphor for
the simple power of calling a thing as it is. . . . The best
[stories] are disquieting for their lack of resolution, ending on
the inhale rather than the exhale. Ultimately, The Thing Around
Your Neck is less a tour of postcolonial scars than it is about
humans who bang into each other on their way to getting what they
want. In this way, Adichie follows in the footsteps of Jhumpa
Lahiri."
-Erin Adair-Hodges, Weekly Alibi (Albuquerque, NM)
"As richly modulated as MacArthur fellow Adichie's hard-hitting
novels are, her short stories are equally well-tooled and potent.
As her first collection arcs between Nigeria and the U. S., Adichie
takes measure of the divide between men and women and different
classes and cultures. A meticulous observer of tactile detail and
emotional nuance, Adichie moves sure-footedly from the personal to
the communal as she illuminates with striking immediacy the
consequences of prejudice, corruption, tyranny, and violence in
war-torn Nigeria and unaware America. . . . Adichie's graceful and
slicing stories of characters struggling with fear, anger, and
sorrow beautifully capture the immense resonance of small things as
the larger world pitches into incoherence."
-Donna Seaman, Booklist
"A fine new collection . . . set in both the United States and
Nigeria, where things continue to fall apart. A privileged college
student gets involved in gang violence; innocent women flee from a
bloody riot; some characters are visited by ghosts, while others
are haunted by the memory of war. Yet as one character puts it, an
easier life in the United States is cushioned by so much
convenience that it feels sterile. Relations between the races are
awkward at best. . . . Adichie, a brilliant writer whose characters
stay with you for a long time, deserves to be more widely
known."
-Leslie Patterson, Library Journal
"The title of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection
intrigues even before you open the covers. . . . Adichie has
written of gang violence and police brutality in her native
Nigeria, of deceived wives and old men remembering the Biafran war,
and of a Muslim and a Christian woman forming a momentary bond
while religious riots rage outside their hiding place. Adichie's
spare, poised prose, the coolness of her phrasing, ensures these
scenes are achieved without melodrama. And though she writes very
specifically about Nigeria, the stories have a universal
application. . . . The Thing Around Your Neck explores myriad
tensions between new world and old. . . . [Adichie's] tales explore
an array of power struggles, and often the story's kick comes from
the shifting of that power, the moment of realization or choice
that will result in changed lives. It's the hint at these lives
beyond the final lines that reminds one of what a good novelist
Adichie is. There are many characters you would like to travel with
further."
-Isobel Dixon, Financial Times
"Adichie, a classic storyteller, expertly limns the lives of
Nigerian women and their families, both in their mother country and
in their adopted U. S."
-Ms.
"A dozen stories about the lives of Nigerians at home and in
America from the winner of the Orange Broadband Prize. In the five
tales set in the United States, Adichie profiles characters both
drawn to America and cautious of assimilation . . . The very fine
'Jumping Monkey Hill' and the title story both show Nigerian women
confronting white expectations. . . . Insightful and
illuminating."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Extremely rewarding . . . Adichie's growth into one of the
language' s most powerful storytellers is palpable [as her]
language ascends to the level of the best writers, both compressed
to a minute grain, and yet expansive in the way only finely wrought
short stories can be. . . . The integrity of the author, as she
tackles the core morality of [her themes], is in full evidence. We
can clearly see where her strengths, in style and content, ought to
lead her in the future. This is both the roadmap of an unfolding
major career, as well as a view of the library which got her
here."
-Anis Shivani, Brooklyn Rail
"I have a thing for short stories that lend insight into the lives
of immigrants caught between two cultures. My favorite writers in
this category have been Jhumpa Lahiri and Sana Krasikov. Now I'm
adding the Nigerian-born Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. [The Thing
Around Your Neck] is beautifully written and heartbreaking. I'm
halfway through it. I want to race through it because each story so
far has been so powerful. And yet I want to go slowly, to savor her
bringing me over to Nigeria and then back to the US, getting a
glimpse of what it' s like to be stuck in the middle, between the
old and the new, the home of the heart and the home of the
future."
-Jan Gardner, The Boston Globe Off the Shelf blog
"This stunning collection confirms Adichie's position as one of
Africa's brightest new literary stars. She is the author of two
important novels about the Igbo people of Nigeria . . . yet her
writing is even more poignant when applied to the short story:
crisp, succinct, vigorous and loaded. . . . These slice-of-life
stories straddle both [America and Nigeria] and dissect the
imbalance of power and moral corruption in a wide range of
relationships and settings. The first story, 'Cell One,' shows a
descent into lawlessness and police brutality that we've come to
expect depicted in Nigerian literature. Yet in Adichie's hands it
is seen afresh. The writer's cool, intelligent, observant, female
antennae are sensitive to the subtleties of how people behave, and
why, in this story about the interplay of motherhood and teenage
waywardness. . . . It is to Adichie's credit that her writing is so
understated that at the end of the story the reader is left to
imagine what happens rather than being force-fed the gory details.
Her endings are always unpredictable and suspenseful. In 'A Private
Experience' two women take refuge in a shack in the middle of a
riot . . . Their brief interaction affirms the power of humanity to
resist and survive tribal warfare. All Adichie's stories are
suffused with evocative atmospheric detail. . . . While there is a
sense of anger at the injustices that Nigerians have to endure in
their home country, these stories also question whether life in the
US is any better. Many of the immigrants' stories are driven by
loneliness and alienation and some do decide to return home-for
better or worse. Adichie offers insights into both worlds and, like
all fine storytellers, leaves us wanting more."
-Bernardine Evaristo, The Times (London)
"Confirms [Adichie's] status as a first-rate storyteller. In the
sublime title story, a young Nigerian emigre, a winner of an
American visa lottery, expresses her choking loneliness as she
scrapes for a living and for love in Connecticut . . . These
sparkling stories explore loneliness, identity, violence, betrayal,
middle-class obsessions, the bond between parents and children, and
the emigrant and colonial experiences. [Adichie] casts a fearless
and caustic eye on the corruption that Nigerians endured under a
military dictatorship and on what she perceives to be the
fatuousness of the American way of life. . . . Fans of Adichie's
novels won't be disappointed, because each of the 12 short stories
in this book is a mini-novel to which readers can add their own
twists, turns and outcomes."
-Irish Independent
"Adichie's [stories] are as nuanced and well written as
any I've encountered in recent years. You'll be entertained,
enlightened and come away a better person after reading this
collection that toggles between [Nigeria and the U. S.], the clash
of cultures, the divides between men and women and the different
social classes in both countries. . . . ['The American Embassy']
will enlighten and touch you more than a dozen news stories. . . .
The humor in ['On Monday of Last Week'] is nuanced and brilliantly
demonstrates the versatility of the author. . . . Another story
suffused with comedy, 'Jumping Monkey Hill,' brings together a
diverse group of Africans in a writer's conference in South Africa
[and is] a story that will resonate with writers and possibly
members of book groups. I've already decided that The Thing Around
Your Neck belongs on my list of notable books of 2009. If you want
short stories that you'll remember for a long time, read this
collection. You'll find yourself rereading the stories, to catch
the subtleties you may have missed the first time around, to glory
in the work of a young writer who has mastered a difficult art
form."
-David M. Kinchen, Huntingtonnews.net (West
Virginia)
"There is an understated beauty to Adichie's deceptively simple
prose: it remains cool, dispassionate and controlled, and leads you
easily through unfamiliar and unexpected scenarios. . . . The
Nigerian stories, and 'Ghosts' in particular, offer windows on
experience that radiate with compassion. . . . There is a lyrical
ache in this simple tale that recalls Gabriel Garcia Marquez's
beautiful novella Nobody Writes To The Colonel-quite an achievement
for such a young writer."
-Metro (UK)
"Superb. With minimal fuss [these stories] present snapshots of
Nigerian life. . . . The title story tracks the life of a young
woman sent to the US by her family . . . It is memorably,
heartbreakingly sad . . . Both as a person and a writer, [Adichie]
is engaged in an ongoing project of rebellion against the
expectations of others-of those who want to be able to tell her
what the world is like, and what her place in it should be."
-William Skidelsky, The Observer
"The strains and betrayals involved in fleeing one culture for
another figure prominently [in The Thing Around Your Neck] with the
uprooted heroines caught between the devil of a dysfunctional
homeland and the deep blue sea of suburban America. Adichie has a
flair for drama, particularly where violence is involved. Not too
many writers could carry off a beheading with [her] confident,
mid-sentence insouciance . . . The writing throughout the book has
a verve that propels you forward through its pages. The polarities
Adichie explores- Africa/America, black/white, male/female,
master/servant-are very efficiently laid out, gridded over each
other in unexpected ways, with power and weakness constantly
switching positions. And a pervasive, lightly mocking intelligence
gives the whole thing a lively, satirical edge."
-James Lasdun, The Guardian
"Adichie grew up in Nigeria; she now lives in the United States.
Several stories in her new book engineer a kind of moralizing
comedy by viewing one country from the perspective of the other. .
. . An elegant collection. From beginning to end the prose is
serene and the characterization deft."
-Anthony Cummins, The Times Literary Supplement
"A vivid new collection by Adichie . . . In the tense and dramatic
'A Private Experience,' two women, a young Christian Igbo girl from
Lagos and a poor Muslim Hausa woman from the north, take refuge
from a street riot in an empty shop and share lessons in survival.
'Ghosts' [is] an accomplished and powerful story about honour and
regret [that] sounds a long sad chord from the small world of the
elderly, gently gathering wider implications into its brief
compass. . . . [The stories set in America are] full of telling
contrasts between the new world and 'home.' . . . The most
sophisticated story in the collection is 'Jumping Monkey Hill,'
which features an old English post-colonial couple who run an
African writers' workshop outside Cape Town. [It] has a wryly
humorous story within a story, and ends, like many of the tales
here, with the protagonist walking away from compromise. Whether in
the land of the free or under military rule, women are the main
victims-of casual lechery, arranged marriages, cheating husbands
and violence. When women talk to each other they share more than
gossip and information; they are bound together in powerlessness.
The long final story, 'The Headstrong Historian,' a compact tragic
family saga, ends on a faint note of hope with an educated
granddaughter. . . .With its warm and sympathetic heroines and its
finely cadenced prose, this collection demonstrates that [Adichie]
is keeping faith with her talent and with her country."
-Lindsay Duguid, The Sunday Times (London)
"The success of [Half of a Yellow Sun] cemented Adichie's status as
an incredibly gifted storyteller and her stories add further
confirmation. Adichie's work is reminiscent of that of novelists
Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri in that her fiction is largely concerned
with the clash of cultures and the immigrant experience in America.
Like the author's life this collection is divided between America
and her west African homeland. Each is a perfect nugget, telling a
complete story in some 20 pages. Simple but beautiful, the stories
tackle everything from corrupt police and riots to infidelity and
arranged marriages. While she writes of Nigeria with affection,
Adichie never sees it through rose-tinted spectacles. . . . The
stories are compelling and diverse but make up a mere 218
pages-leaving the reader wanting more from this major African
talent."
-Lianne Kolirin, Daily Express (UK)
"A fortunate few writers possess the rare but unmistakable quality
of inspiring a reader's confidence within a few sentences. It is a
curious, almost unliterary trait: like meeting a person whom one
knows is going to become a friend. The secret is not one of content
or style (though Adichie is a stylist of deceptively effortless
grace who seems to manipulate language almost invisibly, so that it
is only later that her careful craftsmanship becomes apparent). Her
particular gift is the seductive ability to tell a story. Adichie's
narratives have something of the compelling allure- at once
intimate and strange-of a crossed telephone line. It is as though
the reader has dropped into the lives of her young women (the
majority of her narrators are young and female) and become
immediately absorbed into their imagined world. . . . Her
characters have the power of archetypes and the verisimilitude that
comes from fine observation. . . . Adichie writes with an economy
and precision that makes the strange seem familiar. She makes
storytelling seem as easy as birdsong."
-Jane Shilling, The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Almost every story [in The Thing Around Your Neck], in the way
only the most satisfying short stories manage, holds the kernel of
something bigger in its fist yet is simultaneously a fully
realised, standalone entity. They don't aspire to be novels-that
would be a bad thing-but they hum with potential. I longed to know
more about each struggling, grieving character as I turned the last
page of each compact and uncompromising tale. And I mean that as a
compliment. Adichie is already, at the age of 31, a formidable
voice in contemporary west African literature, described by
Nigerian heavyweight Chinua Achebe as 'a writer endowed with the
gift of ancient storytellers.' In the title story that gift is
skilfully employed in her use of the second person tense, not
easily pulled off . . . Even when describing something horrific,
Adichie remains dispassionate and the control and distance she
maintains are what make her such a good writer. . . . At its best
Adichie's prose can be breathtaking in the most literal, physical
sense. . . . In both [the U. S. and Africa], Adichie's
preoccupation is with class, and this is why her voice is so
refreshing. Her interests lie in middle class Nigeria and the
diaspora, and she tugs us out of the one-dimensional representation
of Africa-the poverty, disease and civil war-that we are usually
fed."
-Chitra Ramaswamy, Scotland on Sunday
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