IN DEPENDENCE. BOOK REVIEW, CRITICISM AND COMMENTARIES.

 In Dependence book summary. 

Today, I want to review a book written by a Nigerian born author; Sarah Ladipo Manyika. I picked up the book a couple of years ago when it was recommended for JAMB candidates. The book is actually very interesting BUT for an average Nigerian, it is boring. I have met many people- especially the youths and teenagers who think the book is “boring”. We shall talk about the whys later on in this review. But for now, let’s take a look at the book itself before we start considering what people think. In this review, there are different sections or parts and they are numbered below:

About the author.
The background of the book
 The Summary of the book
The characters in the book
Commentaries on the book
The criticism of the book.

About Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Sarah Ladipo Manyika. 

Sarah Ladipo Manyika was raised in Nigeria and has lived in Kenya, France, and England. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and for several years taught literature at San Francisco State University. Sarah currently serves on the boards of Hedgebrook and the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Sarah is a Patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature and Books Editor at ozy.com. Her second novel “Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun” was shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize.

Commentaries About “In Dependence ”  By Sarah Ladipo Manyika.

“Sarah Ladipo Manyika tells a compelling story that challenges centuries of stereotypes of what an African story can be—one that weaves love, history and race across decades and continents. It also reminds us of how Africa has always been embedded in the world and the world in Africa. The novel is a graceful and astonishing achievement.” – Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“I so enjoyed this beautiful and ambitious novel spanning four decades. It refracts race, culture, politics, work and family through a great love story between a Nigerian man and British woman. The writing is crisp and un-showy, the storytelling immersive, and the characters are all written with sensitivity, showing their humanity. The generation of African men who arrived in Britain in the middle of the twentieth century, and married white women, is a lesser-told tale in both British and African fiction. This is an important novel which bridges the gap between then and now.” – Bernardine Evaristo

“In Dependence is a riveting love story across the challenges of race, geography and scars of colonial history.” – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
“In Dependence is beautifully crafted and encapsulated with the rich Nigerian culture.  Sarah expertly enmeshed two worlds together in a fiction that borders so much on reality”
Oalyiwola Oromidayo (author of Rays of Hope).
‘It is a mark of Manyika’s care for her characters that life and love so engagingly result in a hopeful union.’ — Akin Adesokan, author of Roots in the Sky
‘Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s novel has the subtle power of a well woven work, nothing is out of place… it is full of surprises.’ — Obi Nwankanama, Vanguard.

Background Of The Book.
Two distinct phenomena are prevalent in the book. The first is the post-colonial political era in Nigeria. Sarah intricately wove the things that were happening in Nigeria to affect the lives of her characters abroad.  In the book, she infused the political unrests that dominated the Nigerian political scene from the sixties to the seventies and somehow, these happenings played very vital roles in the lives of the major characters (Tayo Ajayi and Vanessa Richardson).

The second is the stereotype that has been existing as far back as many centuries ago of the hurdles and mountains that lovers from different races often faced in their love journey. When Tayo was pointedly told by Mr. Richardson that he (Mr. Richardson) would vehemently oppose him (Tayo) if he dares think of marrying his daughter, Tayo taught that Mr. Richardson was being unreasonably unfair. But when he got back home to Nigeria and he thought about it again, he discovered that his family’s reaction to him marrying a white woman would not be treated with kid’s gloves. He observed with sinking feelings that his parents and his immediate family’s reaction may be worse. Sarah undoubtedly used this in the book to show that being stereotypical goes beyond being educated, rich or enlightened. Stereotype happens all over the world and across races and genders.

The Summary Of The Book.
The book began with Tayo preparing to depart from Nigeria to start his education at Oxford where he had won Baliol scholarship. Tayo’s family (in Ibadan)  celebrated his departure with so much fanfare and festivities because it was a symbolic achievement which no Nigerian had ever done before, so in a way, it was seen as a sort of national celebration but it was only Tayo’s friends and families that enlarged it.

On the day of his departure, the family took a uniform (aso ebi) and they posed for a series of photographs to mark the day. Tayo’s father- a policeman and a disciplinarian was a polygamists who had so many children that often times he forgot their names. He and Tayo’s siblings drove him to Lagos where he would board a ship to London where the institution is located. When they arrived in Lagos, Tayo met with the principal of his school whom he admired greatly but at the time of his departure, he was already detesting the man because of the latter’s assertion and a sense of being superior to everyone else.

He got to Oxford and for many weeks, he was caught up in the inescapable web of campus life. He got invitations to many parties and gatherings and he attended most of them. In one of the parties, he met a very beautiful lady whose name he later knew as Christine Arinze and they both fell in love over time. Christine was a girl from one of the richest families in Nigeria and who had been an excellent student all her life but she was afraid sof disappointing the people at home who had been counting a lot on her. She communicated this fear to Tayo one day but he downplayed the fears and told her all would be okay. He didn’t know the gravity of the situations because at the time, he was already in love with another lady-a white lady called Vanessa whom he later met some months after starting a relationship with Christine. Soon, he quietly ended his relationship with Christine with no apparent reason and clung steadfastly to Vanessa whom he just met.

Perhaps it was this heartbreak and the pressures on her that later pushed Christine into committing suicide.  She took an overdose and died. Tayo felt bad about her death and he knew that if he had been more attentive, Christine would still be alive but it was too late. Christine was gone.

Few months before he could finish his study, Tayo received a telegraph, demanding his immediate return back to Nigeria because his father was terribly sick and he had suffered a heart attack. He left the following after promising Vanessa that he would come back soon because of her. On her part, Vanessa that thought that just some months from then, he would come back to Oxford to complete his education but he didn’t come back until she wrote her final papers in the school and she decided to travel to Nigeria to see him herself.

When she got to Nigeria, Tayo first lodged her in a hotel in Lagos. The following day, Tayo lied that he wanted to go out to get some drugs and when Vanessa offered to follow him, he politely declined, telling that he would soon come back. So he left alone. When he came back some hours later, he looked anxious and restless and Vanessa immediately sensed that something was wrong.  She pestered him until he opened up and confessed to her that he had had an affair. Vanessa thought it was a minor thing because she too almost had an affair but when he told her that “the affair” resulted in pregnancy, she was furious and immediately she left the hotel and took a flight back to United Kingdom.

That was how their love story ended. For the time being anyway.
After many years (twenty four years to be precise), Tayo was now a prosperous author and a civil servant. He had married a beautiful wife (Mariam a) and they now had children. Tayo was not a typical Nigerian married man. He helped his wife with the chores in the house and buying the groceries if absolutely necessary because he and his wife were both civil servants and he thought it fair that he should help her out with the works though they had a house help.

Even after many years, Tayo regretted leaving Vanessa and marrying Mariam. Their love affair had been accidental. Mariam had been the one comforting Tayo after his father’s operation and before they both knew it, they’d already had sex and it was the sex that led to the pregnancy which made it compulsory for Tayo to marry Miriam whether he liked it or not.

After the breakup, Vanessa moved on with her life too and she married Edward, an old friend from oxford who had divorced his wife. She had a daughter for him too. Later when they met in life, they both discovered that the love they felt for each other had not ben dulleled by age and absence, rather, it had grown beyond their excpetations. Tayo divorced his wife Mariaim later in the book and Vanessa too with Edward in a series of different family feuds and misunderstanding. Good enough, their children were able to pull through the divorce in the end and both Kemi (Tayo’s) first child and Vanessa’s daughter became friends in USA where they both lived and when Vanessa finally met Mariam, she was taken aback because she had had thought that Mariam would be old and ugly but Mariam was jovial and genuine as they exchanged pleasantries and gist each other about what they do.In the edn, both Vanessa ended up marrying each other despite being old.

The Characters In the book.

Tayo- he was the hero in the book. He came from a polygamous family from Nigeria and later when he grew up, he was a professor in one of Nigeria’s University until one military regime forced him to relocate with his family to the United States of America where he later got a lecturing job. His dream of marrying Vanessa finally came true in the end.
Vanessa_ she is the heroine in the novel. She was the only child of an ex colonial officer father (Mr. Richardson) who opposed her relationship with Tayo because he was black.  Vanessa was beautiful and intelligent and despite coming from upper class, she loved Tayo wholeheartedly until she discovered that he had impregnated another lady whom he later married.

Mr. Richardson – He was Vanessa’s father. He was an ex colonial officer who was sent to Nigeria during the colonial period. His hatred for Nigerians and Africans must have come from the independence that Nigeria and other African countries gained in the sixties and seventies which must have put him out of work. So it is almost natural to see why he was so vehement in opposing his daughter’s relationship with Tayo, a Nigerian – an enemy.
Mr. Ajayi – He was Tayo’s father. He was a polygamist, yet he was a responsible father who saw education for his numerous children as a gateway to escape poverty and mediocrity. He was a typical example of an average Nigerian married in the sixties and seventies, a race that is gradually dying out by large numbers. Most of the polygamists in Africa today, are not responsible for their families and they pay more importance to acquiring new wives than educating their children.

Mrs. Ajayi- she was Tayo’s mother. She was an example of what Africa expects from a woman. She didn’t fight her husband for marrying other wives and she was a caring mother who never took the wellbeing and comfort of her children for granted.
Mrs. Richardson- She was an aristocratic lady who came from a wealthy family. She was a minor character in the book, yet, her role was significant. She was a typical example of a European woman. While an African woman would cower and obey whatever her husband tells her, Mrs. Richardson (and other married European women by extension) would rather express their opinions and refuse to agree with whatever their hands say if it will affect them.

Other Character are:
Uncle Kayode
Tunde
Yusuf
Christine etc.
Criticism Of The Book.
The Font Size.
When I was asking for people’s opinion about the book, many of them complained about the font size. It was too small and most cases, one has to strain his or her eyes in order to see what has been written clearly. This (if nothing else) had discouraged many readers greatly and despite the fact that the book was recommended for JAMB, many candidates who wrote the exam didn’t even read the book at all because they had to strain their eyes to be able to see the words. Most Nigerians naturally don’t like reading books, but at those rare times when they have to read, they don’t want tyo exact too much energy into it.
Complexity Of The Plot.
In some of my interactions with people who have even taken pains and courage to read the book, many of them confessed that they don’t understand most of the things in the book. Of course, this is not the author’s fault; it is the fault of our educational system that taught us the wrong sides of books. Other African countries are worse, when it comes to reading so it was snot new hearing some people complaining that they didn’t understand anything the book was talking about.
Code Mixing.
In several pages of the book, the author wrote some expressions and conversations in French and Yoruba language which is totally different from English that the readers are mostly used to without immediate interpretations. Though the author puts the interpretation of these expressions and words at the back, it may be especially hard for many people.
Finally, JAMB didn’t do its feasibility studies properly before approving the book to be read for English. The book is excellent, well written and thought provoking but it was above the intellectual level of an average Nigerian that wants to write JAMB because all his/her life, he or she had been exposed to smaller novels with mundane stories so giving such a person a more complex and difficult book is like deliberately punishing someone. What I think JAMB and other examainatiosn bodies in Nigeria should do it that those books that are of low intellectual standard should be stopped from being read at all levels of education in Nigeria and books of this nature should be given to certain classes to be read and passed. This would make students read more original and reasonable books like “In Dependence”


Thank you for reading!`