Customer Reviews

Thing Around Your Neck

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

These are beautiful, whimsical stories of culture shifting, of the intersection of differing African cultures with each other and in particular, the intersections of Nigerian culture, beliefs and experiences with that of the US. Ngozi Adichie's characters are poor, struggling housemaids, young African authors trying to make it as writers with the doubtful aid of English "African literature lovers", Big Men grown fat and over confident with power, influence and wealth, poor students trying to make their way in Western universities, retired academics waiting patiently, but without faith, for their pensions to be paid. Her best characters are the barely noticeable outsiders, those treading the at time treacherous, at times pitiful borders between Africa family and tribal norms and the consumer driven West. The wars, massacres and revolutions here are not those of Old Europe, but of Young Africa yet they have the same, stark effect of those who remember and mark their lives by these epoch-making events. These stories reward and enrich at a number of levels and provoke reflection long after the book is read.

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's newest novel is a collection of 12 short stories, some of which have been previously printed in journals under different names ("The arrangers of marriage" was published as "New husband" in Iowa Review).

Written in her trademark fluid and highly descriptive style (akin to fellow Nigerian Chinua Achebe's), they tell tales familiar to most Nigerians; Cult activity in Nigerian universities, late (or no) pension payments to retired civil servants, a husband's affair and the troubling effect on the wife, Religious riots in a Northern Nigerian city and their aftermath, a morning at the US embassy, a US visa lottery winner's experience in the US, sibling rivalry, and a new bride's awakening after an arranged marriage to mention a few.

Much like her previous books, the tales usually feature some strong female character (or some seemingly weak and docile female who develops strength over the course of the tale) and are set in reference to some real life occurrences in Nigeria; a plane crash that occurs on the same day as the first lady's death after plastic surgery, living under an oppressive military regime, etc.

My only complaint is that a few of the stories seem to grind to an abrupt halt just when you are expecting them to take further flight. She is just as pretty in the flesh as she appears in photos, I saw her at a book reading and signing for this book last week. Another literary classic!

Chimamanda is a very accessible writer. She presents a beautiful collection of tales, with African women, especially Igbo women, at the centre of the tales.

Her style is free-flowing, highly redolent of one who has mastered the art of story telling.Her diction is not too facile or incomprehensible. This serves to engage the reader fully, and one gets to appreciate the plainness, simplicity, strength, and beauty of her prose.

The story I loved the most was "Ghosts", followed by "The Headstrong Historian".Most of the other stories were good but some did not resonate well with me.I felt they were a bit weak in content, and the themes were lost on me.However this is not to take away any credit from Chimamanda.

She pits Western ideals against traditional Igbo values, and leaves the reader to judge which is better. However, in some instances,I believe she tacitly admits that the Igbo norms and cultures are superior to Western ways with their detachment from communal norms, a lack of respect for age, religious morality etc.The African is presented most times in the best possible light,but this does not mean an abdication of blame in the ills that forever plague us in the developing parts of the world.In some stories, the inane practices of pre-existing traditional societies is mentioned e.g curbing promiscuity by insertion of herbs into the female.It would have been nice to see a condemnation of such practices.However, that was not the point of that particular story.

There is an overt feminist tone in most of the stories, which is quite understandable .And I commend her depiction of strong, feminine characters, the situations they encounter, and how they are dealt with in every facet of daily existence.

As an African, and Nigerian, I am proud of Chimamanda's achievements so far, and hope that her success will open the doors for other young, fledgling writers in Nigeria, who are seeking an avenue to be read by the rest of the world.Indeed, there are more stories in that part of the African continenet waiting to be told.

The thing around your neck is an absorbing and beautiful collection of short stories which blew me away and has sent me off in search of more of her stories. Each story in here, all of them, are utterly gripping and told without labouring the point. Right from the first paragraph in the first story I was gripped.

Cmimamanda Ngozi Adiche tells stories of her native Igbu (sp) people of Nigeria but from many different angles. From the story of a young boy, son of university lecturer and professionals going off the rails as observed by his sister, to the story of young wife installed in a large mansion in America by her husband who finds out her husband has a moved a mistress into their house in Nigeria.

I found the range of stories and tales that Adichie tackled the most interesting. She is able to tell different stories from vastly different people, and tell them sparingly yet with deeply observed nuance. No point is laboured but the ideas flow out of the text richly.

Adichie is now one of my must buy authors.

Great book! I love the way the author brings the characters to live & makes you feel like you are actually experiencing what you are reading. It is a fiction yet it is so real as the author writes about events that most Nigerians experience. The author keeps you flipping over the pages in great anticipation of what would happen next. I highly recommend this book.

The Thing Around Your Neck is a collection of short stories with heavy socio-political themes, featuring mostly Nigerian characters. While the author is very talented as evidenced by her previous novels and this current one, I do however think she should stick to novel-length work because it gives her a chance to deeply explore her characters. I think Ms. Adichie's strength as a writer lies in her unique ability to create unforgettable, layered, true-to-life characters and the short story format severely restricts her ability to go much further beyond bringing the characters to birth.

I am hesitant to do a story by story critique but I will say some stories are better than others. A couple unfortunately seem like they are start nowhere and go nowhere but I will not specify which those are so as not to deter anyone from reading what is a good compilation of short stories. But I will say that the title story is my absolute favorite and the last story comes in at a close second. I am also appreciative of the author for as always birthing strong, female characters worth emulating. That was the primary lesson I came away with.

A collection of short stories is one of my favorite genres for reading. It is rare to find a book of short stories that is consistent in quality. When I do, it is a rare gift. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's, The Thing Around Your Neck, is just such a gift. It consists of stories about Nigeria and the United States, focusing on the clash of cultures and the cultural misunderstandings and prejudices that the protagonists face. This book also includes the short story that I consider my all-time favorite - `The Headstrong Mistress'. I read it for the third time in this collection. I first read it in The New Yorker, then in the Pen/O'Henry Prize Stories of 2010. It gets better each time I read it.

`The Headstrong Mistress' takes us to Nigeria where we meet Ngwambe. She is a woman who believes in the culture of her tribe but is also strong enough to stand up against it if necessary. Ngwambe "is a strong-willed woman hemmed in by custom and circumstance, whose beloved son betrays her in an unimaginable way". Nqwambe is widowed early and grieves the loss of her beloved husband. Despite her son's betrayal, the betrayal of her husband's brothers, and her search for ways to keep her culture alive during a time when colonization and `Christianizing the heathens' is booming, Ngwambe carries on. This story speaks to the strength of marital and inter-generational love and the power of a strong woman.

`A Private Experience' focuses on the clash between science and the old ways. A retired professor of mathematics has not received his retirement pension in over three years due to government corruption. While on campus to check once again to see if his pension monies have arrived, he runs into a man who may or may not be a ghost. They discuss the Biafran war of 1970. The professor thinks about his beloved wife who died a few years ago and who visits him regularly, more in the dry season than during the rainy one. The professor lives in two worlds, the world of mathematics and science and in the old belief system of his people.

`On Monday of Last Week' is about Kamara, an educated African worker who comes to the United States to be reunited with her boyfriend after six years apart. Things are awkward between them. Kamara takes a job as a childcare worker. Her boyfriend's mother is an artist, an elusive and spectral figure. Once Kamara meets her, she asks Kamara about mude modeling. Kamara gives this careful thought and when she returns to the house she says yes, thinking this is a special offer just for her. However, it is a seductive come-on, used for most women who enter the house. Kamara feels heartbreak and shame.

The title story, `The Thing Around Your Neck' is an extraordinarily beautiful tale about an Igbu girl from Lagos who wins a Visa to the United States "where everyone has a house, a car and a gun". She goes to live with her aunt and uncle but leaves because her uncle makes inappropriate sexual advances towards her. As an excuse for his behavior, he tells her that the U.S. is a place of give and take. She ends up in Connecticut, bitter and perspicaciously observant of American culture. She sends money to her family but not letters. The thing around her neck is tight when she tries to sleep but loosens once she's in a relationship with a college boy. The clash of cultures and the loneliness that comes on its tail is painful to read about.

In `The American Embassy', a woman has lost her son to soldiers as a result of her journalist husband's anti-government article. She is waiting on line at the U.S. embassy to seek political asylum in the U.S. While on line, she reminisces about her marriage, her son, and the events leading to her son's death. When it finally comes time for her to be interviewed by a U.S. embassy employee, she is unable to recount the political events leading up to her son's death. She feels she would be using her son's death to her own advantage. Towards the end of the interview, she turns around and walks out.

The book contains twelve stories, all top-notch and all dealing with the convergence of cultures, usually the United States and Nigeria. Adiche writes so beautifully that I can not read her stories just once. Painful though they are, I can see myself reading them again and again. She gets the human predicament, especially the predicament of the poor, those with no options, and the contradictions between old beliefs and new ones. She is also able to see the false beliefs that people take on when they think they are acculturated or part of the larger society. She knows they are still outside looking in, and always will be.

This is the strongest book I have read in years. It is impossible to read without having your world rearranged. I particularly liked the stories "The Headstrong Historian" and "Jumping Monkey Hill" which should be required reading. The thing that gives these stories such strength is that the people are not just victims in terrible circumstances. Instead a woman is portrayed as strong and standing up and saying "No more, enough and walking away." This book tells it like it is for some of today's Nigerians. If only those who should pay attention would get the message.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has that rare ability to portray the contradictions of the human condition. Over and over again, she returns to themes of exile, homesickness, and alienation. In the title story, the young narrator gains a prized American visa and goes to her uncle's home in Maine. "They spoke Igbo and ate garri for lunch and it was like home until your uncle came into the cramped basement where you slept and pulled you forcefully to him..." recalls the barely-adult girl.

Again, in Arrangers of Marriages, a young bride discovers that all is different in America when her new husband tells her, "You don't understand how it works in this country. If you want to get anywhere you have to be as mainstream as possible. If not, you will be left by the roadside." And in Imitation: "She does miss home, though, her friends, the cadence of Igbo and Yoruba and pidgin English spoken around her..."

Home is a complex place. The protagonists, mostly young, mostly female, are often a long way from home, both figuratively and literally. Many have fled or want to flee because of violence - a young woman whose four-year-old son was killed before her eyes, for instance, in The American Embassy. But America, in most instances, is not a panacea. A dream of a college education is traded in for the reality of a waitress job. A man whom is chosen by one woman's family -- "A doctor in America! What could be better?" - is, in reality, a pretentious posturer who insists she speak proper English, change her name, and eat in fast food courts.

And so most of Adichie's characters precariously straddle two worlds. Yet what shines forth is the resilience of the women who take destiny in their own hands and remain unbowed. We meet women who flee from uncomfortable situations with their dignity intact. In Monkey Hill, for example, the protagonist - a writer - is challenged that her character would not give up a lucrative job because she was a "woman with no other choices." She reflects, "The only thing I didn't add in the story is that after I left my coworker and walked out of the alhaji's house, I got into the Jeep and insisted that the driver take me home because I knew it was the last time I would be riding in it."

One of the most affecting stories in this collection, to my mind, is the first story, Cell One, a harrowing tale of the narrator's brother, who is arrested n a roundup of gang suspects and sent to jail. That story ends, "It would have been so easy for him, my charming brother, to make a sleek drama of his story, but he did not." The same might be said about Ms. Adichie, who forgoes the drama for solid story-telling.

"I felt as though I were in a different physical world, on another planet. The people [...] wore a mark of foreignness, otherness, on their faces..." Chinaza, a young Nigerian bride describes her new surroundings in New York. She, like other protagonists in this quietly affecting collection of stories, seeks to adjust to daily life in the United States, a country they could only envision from snippets of information prior to their arrival. With each of the twelve stories, award winning Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie opens a small window into the minds of those who grapple with the challenges of bridging traditional cultures and modern realities, whether within Africa or, as in the majority of stories, across continents.

Her central characters may be young brides, part-time wives, mothers, students or job seekers, whose lives are captured in a crucial or decisive period of time. Through Adichie's perceptive portraits, we gain insights into a wide range of "private experience[s]". We meet Nkem, who, having settled with her husband in the US, has now reason to worry about his continuing life back home in Nigeria. Kamara, a recent immigrant, needs to get by on a babysitting job after her uncle and long-term resident, made unwelcome inappropriate advances. Graduate student Ukamaka, abandoned by her boyfriend, finds an unusual friendship in the most unexpected way... Taken together, these sensitively crafted stories, some more like beautiful, impressionistic vignettes, yet always ending with a surprising twist, create a colourful mosaic of women's efforts to take control of their lives, confronting - with varying level of success - the obstacles they face, be they from their own extended family, the prejudices of their surroundings or from their own lack of understanding.

Four stories are set within Africa, adding depth to our appreciation of Nigerian cultural traditions and conflicts. In 'Jumping Monkey Hill', for example, a group of aspiring authors from different corners of Africa meet at a Safari club for a writers' retreat. While at one level the most satirical story, it raises serious questions on prejudice and multicultural open-mindedness among different African peoples. The last story,'The Headstrong Historian', stands alone among the stories, in terms of structure and subject treatment. Couched in a multi-generational Nigerian family portrait and centred on Mwangba, a strong central female character, it explores the historical and continuing clashes between strong cultural traditions, social progress, and old and new religions. Written in the best African story telling tradition of, eg. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Novel, it confirms Adichie's place among the impressive group of internationally recognized Nigerian authors. At the same time, as the other stories in this collection illustrate, the author is finding her own voice and style to story telling. Two of her stories, for example, are written in the second person, creating an unusually intimate connection between reader and author, with us pondering who the "you" really is.

Most of the stories have been published individually at different times. Nevertheless, bringing them together in one volume will be much appreciated by readers familiar with the author or wanting to explore her writing. Both her novels, Purple Hibiscus: A Novel and Half of a Yellow Sun have won international praise, with HALF OF A YELLOW SUN winning the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. When reading THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK, other comparably excellent story collection on cross-cultural and immigrant experiences come to mind, especially Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies or M.G. Vassanji's When She Was Queen. [Friederike Knabe]