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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
this book was one i found difficult to put down, always eager to read the next chapter and see what would happen; this was especially the case in the later half of the book where the plot escalated dramatically, in a way we were eager to see what happened. despite there being many characters they were all explored very well, allowing us to paint a portrait of each one in our minds.
the book explored life in nigeria and how it differs for people of different social backgrounds in a truthful way that also explored every character’s ordeals and joys, showing they were more than just synecdoches for different social classes as a whole. i found myself shocked at the brutality of the events described quite often, which talked of things it’ll take me long to forget, if i do.
i do think the beginning of the boom could’ve been a bit smaller in terms of the build-up to the main plot, but the initial chapters were enjoyable and purposeful as well! do recommend for sure, it’s a great political commentary from the lens of citizens who would’ve usually been shunned to the side; it also shows how if truly good people were in power, the world would be a much better place even if some of us blame bureaucracy etc. for the problems still persisting today.
the book explored life in nigeria and how it differs for people of different social backgrounds in a truthful way that also explored every character’s ordeals and joys, showing they were more than just synecdoches for different social classes as a whole. i found myself shocked at the brutality of the events described quite often, which talked of things it’ll take me long to forget, if i do.
i do think the beginning of the boom could’ve been a bit smaller in terms of the build-up to the main plot, but the initial chapters were enjoyable and purposeful as well! do recommend for sure, it’s a great political commentary from the lens of citizens who would’ve usually been shunned to the side; it also shows how if truly good people were in power, the world would be a much better place even if some of us blame bureaucracy etc. for the problems still persisting today.
3.5 stars.
I love stories about friendships. I can't explain why, I just always have. I struggle with books about romantic relationships, but I'll take a story about best friends any day. If it's a group of friends, even better. And when that group happens to be a band of misfits who come together despite their differences (think The Breakfast Club) I just can't get enough. Welcome to Lagos gives us a compelling look at Nigerian politics, life in Lagos, and government corruption. But the bond between the main characters, the crew of kindhearted runaways who become like family, is what really hooked me.
I love stories about friendships. I can't explain why, I just always have. I struggle with books about romantic relationships, but I'll take a story about best friends any day. If it's a group of friends, even better. And when that group happens to be a band of misfits who come together despite their differences (think The Breakfast Club) I just can't get enough. Welcome to Lagos gives us a compelling look at Nigerian politics, life in Lagos, and government corruption. But the bond between the main characters, the crew of kindhearted runaways who become like family, is what really hooked me.
adventurous
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
informative
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Bit hard to get into, especially in the beginning everything is a bit confusing. Once you're through that it's an overall easy read
This blurb is quite misleading... The "militant" was probably the least naive of the lot.
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
https://alittlebookshouting.com/2020/01/08/welcome-to-january-again-1-8-20/
Really good book but as the dialogue was written in pidgin I couldn’t understand a lot of it I think I need to read more North African books first and come back to this. Not a fault with a book more my lack of understanding
The jacket copy promised to “be full of humor and heart” & I was told that if I like Adichie, I’ll like this one. It started out strong for me, and then I lost the thread somewhere.
1–I can see, beyond the Nigerian setting, why the connection to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work: Chibundu Onuzo’s novel proves smart, insightful, humorous and elegantly written; you are effortlessly drawn into the intrigue of characters and their contexts.
2–Don’t mistake “heart” for “heart-warming.”
As Chike and Yemi head to Lagos to hide and find a new beginnings, they collect Fineboy, Isoken, and Oma along the way. It’s a series of misfortunes that bring them together and a series of hard decisions that bind them; their individual survival becomes a communal one.
Their lives will eventually intersect with Remi Sandayo who up until recently was the Honorable Minister of Education for the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He’s fled Abuja to return briefly to Lagos with the $10 million (aka the Basic Education Fund) that he stole.
Hiding Sandayo and repurposing his money, the group will meet with one more significant character: Ahmed Bakare. Ahmed’s family lives in a wealthy enclave. He was educated and employed in London before moving back and into Lagos as founder and editor The Nigerian Journal.
Ahmed will eventually introduce us to an old University classmate of his who still lives in London: Farida.
The novel will shift its points of view and settings between these characters, plus two more via Farida. Some perspectives will appear more than others, and only where needed. Ten differing perspectives, experiences, contexts, Onuzo demonstrating the multifaceted nature of the people, culture, and the city itself in Welcome to Lagos. Included, too, after the first section are epigraphs opening each chapter, excerpts from different sections of The Nigerian Journal.
Chike not only opens the novel, but we will spend the most time with him throughout. He is the leader of a group with an unknowable fate. That he relies on the others as much as they rely on him is of interest to the novel. I find, too, his reading of the Bible of very keen interest. Each recently untethered character grapples to find an anchoring object: for Isoken it’s her aspirations of an education; Fineboy wants to be on the radio; Chike, with no documentation of education, work history or letters of recommendation struggles to find a foothold, and so he looks for guidance in scriptures. All will find some solace and conflict in their relationships with one another.
"He walked slowly to the others. Oma was still singing. he took her hand and she took Yemi’s and he took Isoken’s and she took Fineboy’s and Chike led them down an empty road lit by streetlamps, standing guard like tall metal sentries. the city was empty, an architect’s model of a place, the pavement stretching barren for miles. every once in a while a car would speed by, the driver’s eyes flicking anxiously to their group. only thieves gathered at this hour."
The novel is divided into three parts. The unusual family of five dominate the first, Sandayo enters more fully in the second, and Ahmed features more heavily in the third. Everyone becomes caught up in Sandayo’s life choices. It makes sense that it with the conclusion of his story that the novel should also conclude. And while Onuzo does write the ending using Chike’s perspective, I found myself disappointed. I realized that I wasn’t sure what the book was about to begin with. I mean, of course, the story needed an anchoring conflict. Which meant the story would shift away from the five in order to accommodate five more. Yemi practically disappears from the novel only to reappear for a short chapter that will make more sense in the epilogue. And that is where the five and Ahmed will find their conclusions and trajectories redefined—in the epilogue.
The Epilogue, where you will find my only serious complaint. That it ends with Ahmed and Farida; and that that was their final scene. Their relationship already felt like a device, and that ending felt tacked on, like a request for a romance that might be headed somewhere.
Welcome to Lagos reads like a conflict was written for the sake of providing a story for a group of fascinating characters to populate—they’d arrived in Lagos and are trying to survive/subsist, now what. But a fascinating conflict will require characters to be written and the scope to broaden. Fortunately, the novel is not about any one character or conflict, but the geo-socio-political context they're written into. Unfortunately, if you wish you’d heard more from Isoken…
"The syllabus had not demanded you know past phylum but she had crammed it all anyway. Isoken: the virgin geek, sat with her legs crossed because she wanted to marry a suit man, read her textbooks because she wanted to be a pharmacist, invent drugs, and name them after herself, Edwina, her Christian name.”
[…]
"She was still wearing the jeans that the villagers thought an abomination, that her mother said made her bum shoot out, that she wasn’t going to change because some dunces felt a woman shouldn’t wear men’s clothes. if ever men set upon you, you would want to be wearing the tightest trousers in your wardrobe, trousers that stuck to you and cut off your circulation, trousers that neither you nor a stranger could slide off without at struggle."
The novel’s movement from providing commentary about the five and their contexts move into more pointed incisions into the country’s government and Lagos—getting quite intimate and then telescoping outward to London and a more global stage, and back again.
Onuzo's Lagos, both the domestic and political landscape, is colorful; both foreign and familiar. Onuzo provokes a lot of thought on a myriad of subjects. Her writing is engaging, compelling, seamless in her transitions. I’m glad to have read Welcome to Lagos, and I will be keeping an eye out for more of Onuzo’s work.
Recommended for those who enjoy Adichie, and novels set in Nigeria, or Africa, or just not here; those seeking something educational and entertaining in a read; a good book club choice.
https://contemplatrix.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/lagos/
1–I can see, beyond the Nigerian setting, why the connection to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s work: Chibundu Onuzo’s novel proves smart, insightful, humorous and elegantly written; you are effortlessly drawn into the intrigue of characters and their contexts.
2–Don’t mistake “heart” for “heart-warming.”
As Chike and Yemi head to Lagos to hide and find a new beginnings, they collect Fineboy, Isoken, and Oma along the way. It’s a series of misfortunes that bring them together and a series of hard decisions that bind them; their individual survival becomes a communal one.
Their lives will eventually intersect with Remi Sandayo who up until recently was the Honorable Minister of Education for the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He’s fled Abuja to return briefly to Lagos with the $10 million (aka the Basic Education Fund) that he stole.
Hiding Sandayo and repurposing his money, the group will meet with one more significant character: Ahmed Bakare. Ahmed’s family lives in a wealthy enclave. He was educated and employed in London before moving back and into Lagos as founder and editor The Nigerian Journal.
Ahmed will eventually introduce us to an old University classmate of his who still lives in London: Farida.
The novel will shift its points of view and settings between these characters, plus two more via Farida. Some perspectives will appear more than others, and only where needed. Ten differing perspectives, experiences, contexts, Onuzo demonstrating the multifaceted nature of the people, culture, and the city itself in Welcome to Lagos. Included, too, after the first section are epigraphs opening each chapter, excerpts from different sections of The Nigerian Journal.
Chike not only opens the novel, but we will spend the most time with him throughout. He is the leader of a group with an unknowable fate. That he relies on the others as much as they rely on him is of interest to the novel. I find, too, his reading of the Bible of very keen interest. Each recently untethered character grapples to find an anchoring object: for Isoken it’s her aspirations of an education; Fineboy wants to be on the radio; Chike, with no documentation of education, work history or letters of recommendation struggles to find a foothold, and so he looks for guidance in scriptures. All will find some solace and conflict in their relationships with one another.
"He walked slowly to the others. Oma was still singing. he took her hand and she took Yemi’s and he took Isoken’s and she took Fineboy’s and Chike led them down an empty road lit by streetlamps, standing guard like tall metal sentries. the city was empty, an architect’s model of a place, the pavement stretching barren for miles. every once in a while a car would speed by, the driver’s eyes flicking anxiously to their group. only thieves gathered at this hour."
The novel is divided into three parts. The unusual family of five dominate the first, Sandayo enters more fully in the second, and Ahmed features more heavily in the third. Everyone becomes caught up in Sandayo’s life choices. It makes sense that it with the conclusion of his story that the novel should also conclude. And while Onuzo does write the ending using Chike’s perspective, I found myself disappointed. I realized that I wasn’t sure what the book was about to begin with. I mean, of course, the story needed an anchoring conflict. Which meant the story would shift away from the five in order to accommodate five more. Yemi practically disappears from the novel only to reappear for a short chapter that will make more sense in the epilogue. And that is where the five and Ahmed will find their conclusions and trajectories redefined—in the epilogue.
The Epilogue, where you will find my only serious complaint. That it ends with Ahmed and Farida; and that that was their final scene. Their relationship already felt like a device, and that ending felt tacked on, like a request for a romance that might be headed somewhere.
Welcome to Lagos reads like a conflict was written for the sake of providing a story for a group of fascinating characters to populate—they’d arrived in Lagos and are trying to survive/subsist, now what. But a fascinating conflict will require characters to be written and the scope to broaden. Fortunately, the novel is not about any one character or conflict, but the geo-socio-political context they're written into. Unfortunately, if you wish you’d heard more from Isoken…
"The syllabus had not demanded you know past phylum but she had crammed it all anyway. Isoken: the virgin geek, sat with her legs crossed because she wanted to marry a suit man, read her textbooks because she wanted to be a pharmacist, invent drugs, and name them after herself, Edwina, her Christian name.”
[…]
"She was still wearing the jeans that the villagers thought an abomination, that her mother said made her bum shoot out, that she wasn’t going to change because some dunces felt a woman shouldn’t wear men’s clothes. if ever men set upon you, you would want to be wearing the tightest trousers in your wardrobe, trousers that stuck to you and cut off your circulation, trousers that neither you nor a stranger could slide off without at struggle."
The novel’s movement from providing commentary about the five and their contexts move into more pointed incisions into the country’s government and Lagos—getting quite intimate and then telescoping outward to London and a more global stage, and back again.
Onuzo's Lagos, both the domestic and political landscape, is colorful; both foreign and familiar. Onuzo provokes a lot of thought on a myriad of subjects. Her writing is engaging, compelling, seamless in her transitions. I’m glad to have read Welcome to Lagos, and I will be keeping an eye out for more of Onuzo’s work.
Recommended for those who enjoy Adichie, and novels set in Nigeria, or Africa, or just not here; those seeking something educational and entertaining in a read; a good book club choice.
https://contemplatrix.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/lagos/