Another man’s fate.

The story’s premise sounded promising: a young family from Cameroon try to make a life for themselves in New York City just before the bottom falls out of stock market and on the brink of swearing-in the first African-American President of the United States. Jende works hard at his new job as a chauffeur for a big shot at Lehman Brothers. Neni takes care of their young son, Liomi, while studying around the clock in hopes of getting into pharmacy school.  The narrative alternates between the husband and wife, weaving their home and work life together. The friends that remind them of home and the wealthy Edwards family that they work for are in stark contrast with one another.   I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did.

Jende and Neni are the most clearly drawn characters here, but they often fall into either oddly uncharacteristic behavior or become one-dimensional. The wealthy white family and their friends are rendered only as stereotypes. At first, I thought it was intentional on the part of the author. The vacuous housewives tell Neni about the benefits of prenatal yoga classes as she serves them canapés at a party in the Hamptons. The distant workaholic boss half listens and feigns interest in Jende’s life.  The whim of white privilege  holds the fate of this family of immigrants in its hands. But, Jende and Neni’s characters devolve into alternating hand-wringing helplessness or violent and conniving stereotypes of their own, so I’m not so sure any of it was intentional.

It was a frustrating read for me because the components for a great story were there but were just executed poorly. I wish that Mbue had just stayed focused on Jende and Neni as a struggling immigrant family. If she didn’t delve as much into the personal turmoil of the employer’s family and used them only as a foil for the Jonga family, it might have worked better for me. Initially, their lives were so clearly drawn and the tenuous hold on the future that they both envisioned was palpable. At some point, it just lost its way.