Our institutions are preoccupied with promoting what they call “diversity” tho’ sometimes I suspect what they really want are for people to look different but all think the same way. Reading Stay with Me made me wonder how many of us would manage a culture that really was different. In our culture we may have trouble with in-laws who want to know, “When can we expect grandchildren?” But suppose your in-laws thought the sensible solution to an apparent problem of infertility was for your husband to marry a second wife? And your husband thought a fair compromise would be to provide wife-no.-2 with a separate apartment and spend but one weekend a month with her. Add that your own father was a polygamist, that your mother died giving birth to you, and that you have not one but several wicked stepmothers who despise you. Now that is diversity! That is also the situation of Yejide. Her story takes place over some twenty years, beginning with her courtship by Akin and ending with the funeral rites of her father.

Although I’ve never been to West Africa, I found it very easy to relate to Yejide, having recently been in Southern Africa as a guest of the Anglican Diocese of Swaziland. There are in fact more Anglicans in Nigeria than in England or America, and it seems likely that the future of Anglicanism is very bright, but its centre may well be in Cape Town rather than Canterbury. As I had understood it, if a man was an Anglican already, he wasn’t to have more than one wife. But if he converted he could keep the wives he already had, but shouldn’t marry any more. Here it’s more complicated. Akin is supposed to be an Anglican, tho’ anything but observant. He finds church boring. (From my experience in Swaziland – that’s hard to imagine. You could feel the Holy Ghost’s tail feathers tickling you all over.) Both he and Yejide are well-endowed with contemporary “Western” culture, very fluent in English and university graduates. Yejide is a capable businesswoman who manages her own chain of hair salons. Akin is a bank manager. Their Yoruba-speaking elders are attached to traditional culture and religion, and for them producing children is a woman’s principal role. But tho’ I found Yejide’s in-laws and step-mothers repelling, one marvel of the really different culture they represent is that we can take a fresh look at our own. Just what is the difference between a couple’s solving their fertility problem by finding an egg donor, as opposed to the husband’s taking a second wife? Or between choosing a sperm donor and getting a brother-in-law to be the father? It does make one reflect.

I found the more we learned about Akin the less I liked him, tho’ he seemed well-meaning but weak in confronting his own problems and relationships. Yejide is a wonderfully strong woman and a very sympathetic character. This book seemed long to me, but I was glad to spend so much time in her company. I had the good fortune to listen to the Audible version, and found the narration of Adjoa Andoh brilliant at giving the characters appropriate voices, especially the Yoruba speakers. But the sound of Yejide’s English-speaking voice was especially beautiful and attractive, and seemed to fit her perfectly. Both as a story of a courageous woman and as a cultural experience, Stay with Me will be one of my best reads of the year.