A kind of madness Stories

Okonkwo's debut short-story collection is an artistic exploration of the hidden lives of ordinary people. These 10 stories are unapologetically Nigerian, yet they are also universal in their specificity. Many readers may have never experienced the threat of electricity being cut off at any hour, but everyone understands the panic of being caught in the act. Readers may never have been a pastor, but most everyone can understand the allure of compromising one's beliefs if that can guarantee success. Through a medley of young and old characters from all walks of life and economic stations, Okonkwo examines the things we should say but don't and the things we shouldn't say but do and the consequences of both. Each story is bursting with multiple layers, making this the kind of book readers will want to pick up time and again. From their dramatizing of everything from schoolyard rivalries to a wife afraid to reveal her sexual preferences to her husband, Okonkwo's stories are surprising, illuminating, and deeply human.

Okonkwo explores in her agile debut collection the private feelings of her characters and the social pressures they face in contemporary Nigeria. In "Animals," a boy befriends the chicken his mother has purchased for a pepper pot dinner and hides the depths of his grief after the chicken is slaughtered. In "The Harvest," a pastor named Alfonso loses his church in pursuit of a capital funding campaign. Certain of his holy rectitude, he becomes increasingly alienated from everyone around him--including his wife: "Alfonso wondered why it was so much easier to talk to an unseen God, than to the person beside him, made of flesh and blood, like him." In "Burning," a little girl is subjected to her mother's mental illness, which is brought on by a dibia or spiritual medium who diagnoses the confused child as an ogbanje (in Igbo lore, a child who is repeatedly reincarnated). Okonkwo has a Chekhovian eye for the tangle of internal motivations and assumptions that steer her characters. Particularly well rendered, in "Shadow," is the affection of a young boy, alienated from his own family, who fixates on a visiting aunt, only to realize over time that he is not as special to her as she is to him. Readers will be eager for more of Okonkwo's artful writing. Agent: Renee Zuckerbrot, Renee Zuckerbrot Agency. (Apr.)