AYOBAMI ADEBAYO’S STAY WITH ME AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS
“I must leave this city today and come to you.” The novel opens in the city of Jos in 2008, to a lady telling a story in an emotional tone as though to her husband who lives in far away Ilesa from whom she was separated, while the reader observes as an onlooker (or onreader, as the case may be). Mainly set in the western part of Nigeria, the novel revolves round the cities of Ilesa, Ile-Ife, Lagos. A part of the story is told from Jos as earlier pointed out. And a conversation or two along with a transition took place in Bauchi. It goes back and forth in time through a twenty-three year timeline from 1985 to 2008.
Stay with me is about a couple who got married and for some certain reasons extensively discussed in the novel, found it hard to have children of their own. The story revolves around the challenges, as faced by the couple as a result of this. But of course, it goes beyond just that.
The strength of Ayobami’s writing is the grasp she has on the story she tells; this much more than her mastery of words; some of her sentences seemed to me that they could have been better, maybe by pruning the use of adjectives. Her ability to weave and unravel the story in a multifaceted way — withholding some little details, and revealing them later when they were unexpected is something to be applauded. Being confident that the story will do the whole job, she showed no keenness in the use of flowery words, or trying to over-paint or trying to pass opinions or emotions down the reader’s throat. She went ahead to tell the story with a voice which resembles that of Chinua Achebe in “A man of the people” Maybe that was what Otosirieze Nnaemekaram meant when he compared both writers as writers who write sparse prose.
The writer must be applauded for the huge success made in escaping the sin of telling a bias or one-sided story in a story that had all the temptations. This she did by giving the two main characters separate voices in which they told their stories, acknowledging their flaws. The story is told in three perspectives by the two characters. Yejide on one end telling her story, Akin on the other telling his, and the chapters I refer to as the middle point where they are in conversational story telling. By this, she affords us the privilege of hearing from both sides. Other characters are seen from the perspectives of Akin and Yejide. The character Funmi was a huge success because she indeed was a resonation of what real life characters like her mostly are in reality — funny and ambitious.
The skill showcased by Adebayo, in the novel in her use of Yoruba folktales to make deep points in the novel, is indeed remarkable. For instance, she had altered the Olunrobi’s story as she told it to Olamide and made the following point”
“The reasons why we do the things we do will
not always be the ones that others will remember.
Sometimes I think we have children because we
want to leave behind someone who can explain who
we were to the world when we are gone. If there
really was once an Oluronbi, I do not think she had
any children after she lost Aponbiepo. I think the
version of her story that survived her would have been
kinder to her if she’d left behind someone who could
shape the way she would be remembered. I told Olamide
several stories, expecting that one day she too would tell
the world my story.”
Another example is when Akin tells Rotimi a shorter version of the story of the tortoise who travels far away, to a Babalawo for a charm which would make his wife pregnant. This, for the reason that the story ended happily and it no longer resonated with him.
There were some holes in the plots, for example, the status of the children in the novel not being discovered in the hospital? She made a huge success with weaving the various political unrests in the country around her plot, including the 1993 incident but failed to mention MKO Abiola who was the cynosure of the 1993 riots. And again, the various twists around the infertility story, and the reason which was later arrived makes the story almost unbelievable considering that it was Yejide who suffered most of the persecution. There are many questions that could be asked from this angle of things. But again, the novel would probably have not been written if all these factors were allowed by the writer to clog her writing process.
I have always agreed that the most important things are the story and the context in which it was told. Stay with me is an African story told with a wonderful language; at a point, it was much like reading in Yoruba language. The manners in the dialogues between Akin with his mother and Funmi’s sarcastic remarks to Yejide are excellent highlights.
Stay with me is a tragicomedy of love, loss and every pain that comes in between; the almost unending search for happiness that lies in between as sufferers move from calamity to calamity seeking redemption. Ayobami’s story is one that resonates with every person who has been through the intricacies of life — switching between its complexities. There are various philosophies, accompanied with the points gotten from the altered folktales with which contributed to the riches of the story. It is always amazing to encounter a work of literature which touches on the reality of our lives. Seeing that is a debut, one cannot but hope that this wonderful novelist, by virtue of her ingenuity, gifts us more amazing works and Stays with us.
