2018 - Discussion Thread Q4 - Stay With Me

Some general comments before I go into the spoiler-ish bits that I’m going to completely white out. This isn’t really a book I would have come across on my own, but I might have picked it if I had. The prospect of (a) the troubles of being childless, (b) family pressures and (c) the naïve thinking that love conquers all is quite my recipe for a good book and this one didn’t disappoint! However, I did mention in the Reading Records thread that I enjoyed it in a bit of a strange way, and here’s why:

Firstly, the overall book structure. It’s one of those books where the author says something, you have no clue why she did so, and only realise much later. That was my feeling from the first chapter (although I subsequently accidentally stumbled on a review which gave it away slightly), I had no idea why the mood was so sombre as a wife appears to be narrating to her husband. She brings up a child she thinks of a lot, who would be going to university, again with a bit of a sad tone suggesting that the child is no longer alive. The story then switches back and forth between different timelines (university days, married life…), and also switches narration between Akin and Yejide. I don’t usually enjoy multi-narrator books where the switches aren’t made obvious, I’m ok with the ones where the chapters start off with the narrator’s name for instance, but somehow it worked really well in this case. Most of the time, Akin and Yejide refer to each other within the first couple of sentences anyway, so it was obvious.

The characters. Akin frustrated me to no avail. I realise that the problems in the book are multi-factorial, but I cannot help but feel that his own inability to stand up for his wife to members of his own family was the root cause of many issues, and the taking of a second wife right at the start of the book didn’t help matters. At that stage, it wasn’t obvious what the problem was, and so I thought that the family were just trying their options to facilitate his having a child. When I found out that he was aware of the issues all along, even insisting to the doctor that they led a “normal sex life”, I really wanted to punch the guy. He then goes on and sets up an elaborate scheme with his brother Dotun to get his wife pregnant, sparking a domino-effect of problems as Dotun carries the mutant gene for sickle-cell anaemia which Akin does not, again portraying his wife as the betrayer of trust in their marriage.

That being said, I don’t agree with Yejide’s agreement to sleep with her brother-in-law the way in which she did, and I can feel a sense of Akin’s sense of betrayal when he came home and found that they had gone through with it as she had not refused Dotun’s advances. I really don’t understand how either of them could have thought that they would be able to continue functioning as husband and wife after that. The original proposed plan – to take a relative’s child and raise it as their own – made so much more sense, so it’s not like there weren’t options. Neither do I agree with her decision to simply leave upon knowing that Rotimi had fallen unconscious. Yejide presents what is a totally flawed argument (to me) that “if she had been fine, then Akin would have told me”. Well, not if you went into hiding and he spent years tracking you down! I accept that the earlier mental health issues are not her fault, family pressure can drive women to such extremes, but abandoning a child that is already there in your arms is just… wrong.

Despite all that, somehow I am still happy for Yejide that Rotimi did turn out ok in the end, and is even accepting of her as a mother. I feel like she got some sense of redemption when Timi tells her that she has only one mother, and calls nobody else by the term “Moomi”, which is exactly Yejide’s sentiments earlier on in the book. That’s where the story ends, but I hope for their sake (given that Timi seems to have a very close relationship to her father, and Akin / Yejide also clearly still have feelings for each other) that they are able to make it work as a family having gone through so much.

So all-in-all: Yes, I was frustrated with the characters. Yes, I didn’t agree with their decisions. But in the end I found myself rooting for their happiness and I genuinely felt happy when the family reunited at the funeral. The book I thought addressed the issues of family pressures in a community like the Ajayis very well, how it is always the woman that is blamed (even though it may not be her fault, like in this case!), and how it pushes people to drastic measures which, in the grand scheme of things, may not actually be necessary.

Thank you Ellie for another wonderful choice! I'm looking forward to hearing what the rest of you thought of it