Ayobami Adebayo

A Novel

Spell of Good Things

—Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta

Lindsay

Muffled rage stalks like the wind, sudden and invisible. People don’t fear the wind until it fells a tree. Then, they say it’s too much.

Time was unforgiving, it didn’t stop, not even to give people a chance to scrape themselves off the floor if they’d been shattered.

He was grateful to her for this; she still made demands of him. She assumed he was capable of more than the reveries he often sank into, able to do more than putter around the house all day. Now and then, her faith was enough to push the darkness away.

Kaycee

Stuck, surrounded, drowning because of the convoluted language of power, approval, and worth in the Nigerian society that dictates the lives of Ẹniolá, Wúràbọlá, and the people around them. Taking care of others –especially family, especially men– before all else. Questions of righteousness vs. survival, what love means when relationships are understood (even if unacknowledged) to be transactional. How to (is it possible to?) remain hopeful, dignified when political corruption and long-embedded social structures push and pull you and make easy choices disappear.

Spell of Good Things A Novel

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