'Dream Count' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published by Fourth Estate
An all-encompassing and wide-reaching story of four women, Dream Count is split into four sections. Two of them – Chiamaka and Omelogor – are told in the first person, while the other narratives – Zikora and Kadiatou – are told in the third person. But testament to her writing, each part could easily stand on its own as a book.
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America who, faced with the isolation of lockdown in the pandemic, Googles and ponders the men who have come and gone in her life, as well as her jaunts around the world, from London to Lisbon.
Zikora is her best friend and lawyer, who is struggling with the heartbreak of her partner leaving her before the birth of their child, and the trauma of her delivery.
The story of Chia’s housekeeper, Kadiatou, takes us from Guinea to the US. Raising her daughter as a single mother in America, her dreams come crashing down following an incident (which mirrors the real-life accusations made in 2011 by hotel housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn).
Then there’s Chia’s cousin and best friend, Omelogor. Extroverted and bad-tempered, she’s richly drawn as a woman of many contradictions. Just like Chia, she is suffering under the same weight of expectation to find a man. Moving to the US to write a postgraduate dissertation on pornography, her section is part meditation on gender politics.
Addressing everything from FGM to the American dream, this engrossing and moving novel of the female experience was thankfully well worth the wait.
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