when perfect isn’t enough

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Hello! It’s hard for me to write about this one without giving away the whole plot, so I’m going to be oblique. Yejide and Akin are a young, happily married, childless couple, and their childlessness leads them both to some questionable and desperate decisions.

Yejide’s life seems damned near impossible, while somehow simultaneously completely normal. Or maybe “normal,” but either way it seems impossible, but there she is, making it happen, in the way that so many women do. What she doesn’t know is that normal is one thing it is not, given the state of her marriage — incidentally, to a man she adores, who’s in every sense but one perfect for her. Sadly, he’s not prepared to deal with that one in a way that saves both him AND his wife. He’s working on it for sure, but he’s been dishonest with her, instead allowing her sanity to wither and her reputation to sink. In the end he fashions a remedy that is so fucked up that its repercussions last for decades.

All this is set against significant, and sometimes harrowing, background circumstances. Revolution is happening outside the door, and it’s crazy and brilliant how they just have to deal with everything while dodging potential gunfire. And then there’s the push/pull between modern and traditional. Yejide and Akin live in a city, and Yejide has to work and have a modern existence, just in order to live a relatively healthy, sane, productive life, but also has to deal with her in-laws’ bullshit about her fertility or perceived lack thereof. Despite its being the 20th century, Yejide’s value is still seriously diminished as a childless wife, to the point where the family insists on bringing in a back-up. The really diabolical thing about her husband’s betrayal is that instead of fixing everything, it destroys their marriage, and many years of everyone’s life…instead of just telling the truth. But can you say “just” telling the truth, like it’s not a big deal? When everything, everything hinges on your ability to do this one thing and you can’t?