Podcast #179: Ayobami Adebayo—Stay With Me
The New York Public Library Podcast features your favorite writers, artists, and thinkers in smart talks and provocative conversations. Listen to some of our most engaging programs, discover new ideas, and celebrate the best of today’s culture.
Today on the show: Nigerian writer Ayobami Adebayo. Her debut novel, Stay With Me, was published in the United States last week. I have been telling anyone who will listen that they should read it. The trick with my proseltyzing, though, is that, when a prospective convert asks me what the book is about—an entirely reasonable question—I’m at a loss for exactly what to say, because one of the best parts about the book is discovering its twists and surprises as you read it.
So the best answer is that it’s a gripping, at times even shocking, novel that is eminently readable and which I was hard-pressed to put down. For more detail, I’ll rely on the synopsis from the book&#rsquo;s beautiful dust jacket: Stay With Me is the story of a marriage falling apart. A young couple, Yejide and Akin, have been married for four years and appear incapable of conceiving. Despite having long agreed that polygamy is not for them, one day Akin’s family appears at their door with a young woman they introduce as Akin’s second wife. Furious, shocked, and jealous, Yejide realizes the only thing she can do to save her marriage is get pregnant. Then things get crazy. And you won’t expect what happens to happen.
After it was published in Britain, Stay With Me was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, one of the world’s more prestigious literary awards, which until recently was known as the Orange Prize. Here in the states, Michiko Kakutani, wrote her last review in the New York Times before stepping down as its chief book critic on Stay With Me. Kakutani called Adebayo an “exceptional storyteller” and the novel a “powerfully magnetic and heartbreaking book.”
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