A review by thatothernigeriangirl
A Bit of Difference by Sefi Atta

3.0

Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference is the type of book you pick up after a week of reading Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle. It gives you a similar protagonist but without the mental press-up. This is not to say that the book is vacuous; it just highlights all of the important issues in a laidback style and that is my favourite thing about it.

Deola Bello, our protagonist, is a Nigerian expatriate living and working in London while juggling life issues with the baggage of being “an almost-40 year old unmarried Nigerian woman”. Like Gunnar from The White Boy Shuffle, Deola exists in the story as more of a commentator, even in parts of the book that detailed her life in present tense. Like she was always looking into her own life and analyzing it. This wasn’t a bad thing for the story and in fact, that’s the only reason I liked Deola.

A Bit of Difference tells the story of a woman living in a contemporary world and trying to navigate its complexities; so essentially, a very relatable main character. We see this ‘navigation of complexities’ in all the topics Deola broached while schooling, living, working in the UK and eventually back in Nigeria. It is the quintessence of a social commentary told in a patriotic yet open-minded way. Deola didn’t give excuses for the shortcomings of certain systems in both countries and she didn’t belittle the good either. Even while nursing her own biases, she was still able to pinpoint what the ‘ideal’ should be.

All in all, while I wasn’t blown away by the book, I appreciate the simplicity of the storytelling. I kept waiting for ‘something’ to happen but that ‘something’ never surfaced for me; the pace of the book remained relatively the same through out. Would I be reading more books by Atta? Yes! And I do recommend this one but not as a “do-or-die” affair.