Harsimran Kaur ON Oct06, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW,A SPELL OF GOOD THINGS BY AYOBAMI ADEBAYO–FICTION
Rating: 4/5
Defiance is a state of mind! It is a silent disregard to the usurped notoriety experienced by us. We often reclaim it as an effrontery bit isn’t disobedience a perfectly laid out plan? One may call it an indisputable territory swallowing the swift terrains of dogged ‘doggerels’ squawking the inner turmoil, and slipping on the puerile plains to finally get the spine straight.
‘Defiance is for others; the many who feel obligated to the eccentricity. For those who show resistance, it’s a philosophy—a restoration of peace within’. Peace—it’s there, right there within us; it’s all about making the right choices at the right time. The incendiary rumpus, how can we evade it? Isn’t the ambivalent a feast to our rudderless riley? And, then how we weigh existence every now and then. Existence does falter in its perpetuity when we are bedeviled by the implausible but then a spell of good things turns the sleepy cows into galloping horses.
Intrepid and ineluctable, ‘A Spell of Good Things’ by Ayobami Adebayo is about dreams and motives. Although born unrestrained, we gradually train our minds in a particular way that acceptance becomes a raison d’ etre. The indulgent heart then tries to break free, and this is where we sometimes find the good things, in the complexities and comeuppance.
The dewlap of ignominies has been a cul-de-sac for the faff and furtive Eniola. How he describes the good things? Ask him if they have ever happened to him; he considers them a disempowered profligacy. He is harrumphed at school and a constant rendition of his poverty feels like running in red. His father’s perfidy mutilates him mentally and his mother’s paradoxical tolerance is a damp squib. He knows all! The wait to create a heaven or hell finally lands on his door. Will the desi datum turn into a disport or fall as an apocalypse?
Wuraola belongs to another end of the world, unlike Eniola, where pride and privilege knocks with an unprecedented valor. But, when it is that life offers a salutary of perfection! Inspite of Dr. Wuraola’s strong educational backing, she finds herself torn between patriarchal consanguinity and compos mentis of inner voice. She laments the prodigal inequities of men who squander their lethal position as a cow mercilessly gazes on the rolling land. Defoliated of her dignity by her fiancé Kunle, Wuraola usurps the resistance so effortlessly targeted as ‘comeuppance’ by the cultural derring do.
What is so common between Eniola and Wuraola? Is it a caterwaul of retaliation to the present imbroglio they both are stuck in? Or, rather a heuristic plunge into one’s mind to disregard the atavistic? They both fall in symmetry to show defiance to the ordinary, be a halberd to the haggard-self and to the hard-bitten realities. What awaits them is a spell of good things among the schismatic.
A peccadillos, a pejorative, a perfidy—Wuraola’s and Eniola’s life—a web of intricacies’! The book takes us to the unsavory life of Nigeria where political caucus belli flaunts its solecist wings, and the recline of power is scuzzy. The formidable reigns, in the cerebrum of a discordant mind; power screeches him to absorb more, he lives by the insignificant—more power adds to its sheen making the ordinary a tempestuous struggle for more might. The politics of Nigeria grapples both Wuraola and Eniola; their lives meet to stiffen their knees to carry the burden of this unsolicited power sotto voce.
Spell!! It seems to me a glistening sky beaming with transcend hues or a crackling whiff of lights spreading in the heaven; the blemished horizon feels obligated, though! Walking through the disturbances, any spell—ephemeral nevertheless—unleashes a spirit of reckoning. For Eniola’s mother, the parochial investment in her children is a cadence; the tyrannical pummeling of life has been harsh but she gradually finds a way to sink in her emotions tightly under the teeth.
Wuraola’s mother too likes to grind the paste of the ‘if’s’ & ‘but’s’ of life; stacking up jewelry to buying a house with her sister for rainy days is her way of incanting a horde of good things in her life. The book ‘A Spell of Good Things’ expounds on a customary alliance where women are regarded to present themselves with inhibitions and level-up every time to a circumstantial staccato, any undisruptable act falls like a mighty stone.
But, we still carry on to live—live the life others prefer us to live until ‘a spell of good things’ cuts the rustic corner.
TAKE AWAY
A story of complex emotions and indissoluble insights!