The Thing Around Your Neck

Loved these individual short stories. I felt like I personally knew each character

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 f

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.

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.

I received this book as a gift after the author did an interview on NPR. I had never heard of the author, but I was immediately captivated by her strong and elegant prose, the compelling subject matter of her stories and the natural development of her characters. I adore the short story as an art form, and applaud Ms. Ngozi's effort. I will definitely recommend this book to many friends. Well worth the hardcover price, too.

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!