In a time where people fret about the declining literacy of the contemporary world, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie stands as one of the few celebrity writers left. Known for her TED Talks, The Danger of a Single Story (2009) and We Should All Be Feminists (2013), her best works come in the form of novels. Through Purple Hibiscus (2003), Americanah (2012), and her masterpiece, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), Adichie has demonstrated a formidable ability to write stories examining cultural norms, uncomfortable assurances, and the pitfalls of young ambition in the spaces of the United States and her home country, Nigeria.
After 13 years, she is back with another novel, Dream Count, released on March 4 of this year. The plot centers around four female Nigerian expats in the United States. As Adichie has grown older, so have her characters. No longer the young and idealistic people who populate her stories, we see women in middle age. Chiamaka is a travel writer recounting her past relationships, Zikora is a new mother to a baby whose father won’t take accountability, Omelogor is a financier who leaves her fraudster career in Nigeria to study the cultural effects of pornography at an American university, and Kadiatou is a hotel maid whose life shatters when raped by a prominent French politician.
The first 100 pages—and, in general, Chiamaka’s story—are the strongest in narrative and character. Adichie brilliantly renders a series of failed boyfriends, hilariously satirizing an art history professor and depicting a relationship with a person who is pleasing yet not exciting. There is a vitality in these opening pages that the book slowly loses until a riveting and horrifying middle section detailing Kadiatou’s legal battle against the politician who assaulted her while she was cleaning his room. At this point, the novel seems to have transcended to some higher theme, but soon enough, we are back with Chiamaka’s bad dates, though they suddenly seem less important.
Does Adichie mean to juxtapose the two to draw a contrast or to equate them in her project of documenting middle-aged struggles? One would hope it would be the former, but the narrative voice is too kind to Chiamaka—and her ridiculous wealth—to assume so.
Interesting questions arise when one tries to view this book as social commentary. Certainly, most novels should be treated aesthetically and not as political documents, but Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s prior engagement with that kind of discourse—like the Biafran War in Half of a Yellow Sun and the immigrant experience in Americanah—demands similar questions from Dream Count. A lot of the novel’s back half is dedicated to condemning progressive American college kids, and while we are certainly an easy group to make fun of with our political quirks and sometimes puritanical beliefs, Adichie’s criticism doesn’t strike the reader as anything new and creative. Omelogor encounters students who put down what they don’t like as “problematic” and who can’t stop talking about their identity—characters who are more like caricatures. Even if there are valid critiques about the results of youth progressivism, something she pulled off well in Half of a Yellow Sun, one hopes that a great novelist would find a more interesting angle than a right-wing radio host would.
The heartbeat of the novel comes through Kadiatou’s experience, which, even before her assault, is deeply sad and compelling. The only character of the four to not come from privilege and wealth, we watch her experience female genital mutilation and a devastating personal loss all before she emigrates to America, where the rape happens. The event is modeled off the real-world alleged assault of Nafissatou Diallo by Dominique Strauss-Khan, who was likely to be the future prime minister of France before he was charged (charges that, to the dismay of many, were later dismissed). Happening a few years before the #MeToo movement and therefore not ending well for the victim, Diallo, one must credit Adichie for giving eloquent fictional voice to a perspective all too ignored over a decade ago. With much of the novel taking place in the first months of 2020, the foreboding menace of the pandemic in combination with all this creates a wonderfully eerie feel at times.
Adiche takes liberties in imagining Kadiatou’s reactions to key events, making the book risky at times when compared to the real-world scandal. Mixed with sometimes repetitive plot points in the way of romance and a distracted narrative thread, Dream Count does not feel as airtight or as groundbreaking as Adichie’s previous works. Part of that is certainly the tension of mixing deep human stories with social issues of our time—the pandemic, campus progressivism, the #MeToo movement—which is all part of a marriage that can feel shaky in this novel. But the human part? The yearning, the family drama, and the approaching creep of middle-age all rendered with Adichie’s excellent prose make this novel worth checking out.
Really into tacky boba shops, pretentious novels, and long talks with friends that are a mix of both
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