REVIEW: The Thing Around Your Neck by C. N. Adichie

Hello Royalty.

I am happy to be writing my first book review on the blog! If you follow me on Instagram, then you already know this is coming and I am happy you are here! I hope you are happy too. So recently, I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck and trust me, it is one of those books that make you awed.

Publisher: Fourth Estate

Pages: 216

Format: Hardcover

Before I let you know about my encounters, let’s check what goodreads has to say about the book with a 4.2 star rating.

GoodReads

Adichie turns her penetrating eye on not only Nigeria but America, in twelve dazzling stories that explore the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

In “A Private Experience,” a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she’s been pushing away. In “Tomorrow is Too Far,” a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother’s death. The young mother at the center of “Imitation” finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to reexamine them.

Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, these stories map, with Adichie’s signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them. The Thing Around Your Neck is a resounding confirmation of the prodigious literary powers of one of our most essential writers.

ALEXANDRA ZION’S ESCAPADE

When I picked up The Thing Around Your Neck and I saw it was a collection of stories, I thought something like this to myself, “Hmm…doses upon doses of goodness”. If you would like to know, Adichie is one of my favourite writers, so maybe I’ll be a bit bias in my judgement (or maybe her writing power is just that awesome). The book has twelve brilliant stories namely:

  1. Cell One
  2. Imitation
  3. A Private Experience
  4. Ghosts
  5. On Monday of Last Week
  6. Jumping Monkey Hill
  7. The Thing Around Your Neck
  8. The American Embassy
  9. The Shivering
  10. The Arrangers of Marriage
  11. Tomorrow Is Too Far
  12. The Headstrong Historian

I enjoyed number seven the most…not the story exactly, but the way it was written. It was directed to the reader in a fast paced, almost accusing manner that made me think, “wait, wait, hold up a little”. After reading six preceding stories where the story was either told in first person or in third person, it was interesting to come into one that started like this, “You thought everybody in America had a car and a gun; your uncles and aunts and cousins thought so, too. Right after you won the American visa lottery, they told you:…” The “you” thing made all the difference.

I enjoyed number 6 also – so that’s my next best! It’s the kind of story that makes you chuckle but also makes you furrow your brows at some point. The protagonist, Ujunwa, was a writer and she wrote a story in the story. Sounds interesting eh?

Now some stories put a shocker in my heart, like story number 9. It started like the cool wave of the sea then it began to build up from nowhere. It began as a story about Ukamaka in her apartment who was trying to keep up to date with the news of the Nigerian airplane which crashed and how Chinedu, a Nigerian in another apartment on the third floor came knocking on her door so they could pray for Nigeria. Chinedu led the fire-pouring, tongue-speaking, shivering-causing prayer and Ukamaka had to join. Soon after that, they became friends and Ukamaka talked about Udenna, her ex, a lot. Until one day, she found out that Chinedu had been through “pain” too when in Nigeria. Chinedu “had been with him for two years”. And there I was, shocked that Chinedu was gay! I was also shocked by story number 11, when I realised that the protagonist had literally killed her own brother because everyone loved him too much and he “took too much space”…sigh.

This book is a 4.5/5 for me and yes, Chimamanda is a writing beast!

If you have read this book, let me know your thoughts and also, if you have or haven’t, please let me know what you are currently reading. My next read is Anatomy of a Broken Heart by O. O. Kukoyi and we’d be talking about it next Wednesday! Please be here!

About the Author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003 and long-listed for the Booker Prize. Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2009, and in 2010 appeared on the New Yorker’s list of the best 20 writers under 40. Her third novel, Americanah, was published in 2013.

Thank you for your time.

Goodbye Royalty,

With Overflowing Love,

Alexandra Zion.

About the author
Christocentric. Academic. Writer. Poet

2 Comments

  1. Amazing!!!!!

    I feel like I even want to continue writing from where she stopped in some of them.

    Completely left me in a space. My second best book from the author.

Comments are closed.

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