His Only Wife

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While it made sense for her to be naive, she just seemed to get used to her new life pretty fast (she treats staff poorly).

They are also female-centric and deliver some sort of social message without beating you over the head about it which I absolutely can get on board with. She lives in a small town in Ghana with her widowed mother, spending much of her time in her uncle Pious’s house with his many wives and children. I seriously pick this book up simply because she was narrating it, and what a treat I got for doing so. As time passes, and Afi begins studying fashion and bonding with her brother-in-law's lover, she begins to chafe against the constraints imposed by the Ganyos, who time and again tell her not too demand too much from her husband, and remind her—subtly and not—of the advantages brought by her marrying 'upward'.It's hugely readable--our heroine has a likeable voice, the physical setting and social details are superbly vividly drawn, the other characters well sketched. Then one day she is offered a life-changing opportunity—a proposal of marriage from the wealthy family of Elikem Ganyo, a man she doesn’t truly know. As she balances the often conflicting roles of wife, daughter, niece and sister-in-law, Afi starts to question whether she has made the right choice. I have mixed feelings about this contemporary African story about love, marriage, culture and what it means to be the perfect daughter, wife and to “keep your home.

When she does meet Eli she immediately (albeit rather inexplicably for the reader) falls in love with him – but this has the effect of making her unwilling to go along with the pretense of being second choice. She is the embodiment of a difficult yet essential lesson: for as painful as it is, we sometimes have to cut out overbearing and selfish people in our lives if we hope have a true chance at happiness and success.Until one day she is offered a life-changing opportunity - a proposal of marriage from the wealthy family of Elikem Ganyo, a man she barely knows. Afi’s dad died and her mother was unable to provide for her, they lived on the charity of Aunty Ganyo.

Again, to be charitable, Afi IS quite young at 21 and also quite inexperienced, so perhaps that plays a role in her characterization and behaviour. She does have a scene, 20 pages from the end, and instantly takes on more contours than the evil stereotype the Ganyos have spread, yet it doesn’t change Afi’s jealousy and determination to live independently. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. It didn't really make sense to me as she was built up as knowing the situation beforehand and so, I’m not quite sure what her endgame or expectations were but as a reader, it didn’t feel realistic to me. In His Only Wife, we meet men who are defending their societal right to live with more than one wife and women who are feeding to the men’s power by teaching their daughters to play by the rules no one is still allowed to question.I understand why Afi wasn’t open to it, but, as you say, it might have been interesting to explore the idea more fully. Eli loves a woman his family will not accept, and the marriage is their power move to get him to leave the other woman once and for all.