But Nwabineli doesn’t go on to clarify the method until tastefully late in the book, handling the subject in a way that is both respectful and honest, capturing Eve’s raw emotions: anger at her beloved “Q” for leaving her, defensiveness over her husband’s reputation, confusion over his apparent lack of a note, desperation at the thought that she didn’t see any signs. Readers should beware that the novel deals with suicide, and does describe aspects of Quentin’s death in scraps of memory sprinkled here and there. After all, the book's 350 pages is a long time to sit in grief, accurate as it may feel. What had become a lull of spiraling depression gets the jolt that Eve - and the story - needed. Then, about halfway through the book, Nwabineli drops a bomb that changes the rules of the game. Eve's experience as a Black woman in an interracial marriage with a major wealth gap between their families proves key in contextualizing her fraught relationship with her ice-cold mother-in-law, Aspen.
Nwabineli deftly weaves Eve's Igbo heritage into the story, incorporating phrases, food and traditions. Through these, readers accompany Eve as she slowly confronts her relationships and conflicted feelings. Nwabineli relies heavily on these flashbacks early on, when time moves excruciatingly slowly in an embodiment of fresh, festering grief. Most of the story happens at Eve's home in London, where she is haunted by reminders of Quentin and the life they shared, her phone a secondary character that is constantly ignored as a host of family members and friends try - to little avail - to contact her.ĭays lurch forward erratically, stitched together by memories that bubble up from Eve's childhood and, later, her relationship with Quentin, a photographer from one of London’s elite families.
A lot of expectations come with that shocker of a prologue: high drama, fast pace, mystery.ĭramatic proves to be a great word to describe this novel.
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