Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Episode Date: March 13, 2025

The last book guest of this series is Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.Sara and Cariad discuss bad boyfriends, marijuana, the female body, motherhood, grief and Brecht.We'll be back soon! Thank you for reading with us this series. We like reading with you!Trigger warning: This book covers an array of topics which might be upsetting and we discuss some themes including sexual assault, rape, female genital mutilation, slavery and racism.Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is available to buy here.Tickets for Sara's tour show I Am A Strange Gloop are available to buy from sarapascoe.co.ukSara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Cariad’s children's book The Christmas Wish-tastrophe is available to buy now.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdos Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. Hello, this is the last episode of the series before we take a short break. And we're very excited that this week's book guest is Dream Count by Chimamanda Ningoese Adichie. What's it about? It follows a story of four different women and their loves, lives and longings. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club?

Well, it's the new Chimamanda Nengoze Adichie book. Need we say more? In this episode, we discuss bad boyfriends, marijuana, the female body, motherhood, grief and brecht. Trigger warning. This book covers a huge array of topics that might be upsetting and we do mention a lot of them, which includes sexual assault, rape, female genital mutilation. We also talk about slavery and racism, many topics. Hello, Sarah. Hello, Carriad. Here we are with precious cargo in our fists. We have, it's out now, you can buy it, but we are holding.

Early, before people could buy it when it was only given to a chosen few. I have 75. I have 74. Best friends in the book world. We've got the new Chimamanda Negoti Adichie's book, Dream Count. It's been a long time since Chimamanda released. A decade. We've read everything else she's ever written.

Everything. We love it so much. We love her so much. When people started doing, did you have this on Instagram? I saw a few book people sharing the proof and I felt angry that we didn't have them. Really. What we found out was the proofs have been sent to the plosive offices. We squealed though.

We did squeal. We did squeal. Girls at a boy band concert. Yeah. Yeah. It felt like that. It felt like when Ferranti that came out, just those books that you're desperate, desperate to read. Harry Potter 5.

Everything else is pushed off the to read pile. I did have someone in the station the other day sort of trying to get it off me before it came out when I was reading it, walking around with it. If you are a book person, if you like reading books, I would assume you've read Chimam does. work or one of her books. We have read them all. We are huge fans. Yeah. Yeah.

So this is what we're talking about. Are you hugging it as you speak? I feel like... I didn't know anything about it either before I started reading it. Anyway, look, if you don't know Chimamanda, let's just give it very brief. She has been translated more than 55 languages. She's famous for writing half a yellow sun. Americana.

Americana. Purple herbibiscus. She's won prize after prize after prize. A bit nonfiction as well. Oh yeah. She also did a brilliant grief book, Notes on Grief, which I'm a huge fan of. The Feminist Manifesto in 15 Suggestions. She's a recipient of MacArthur Fellowship.

She's incredible. She's one of the most famous novelists in the world. She's won the Women's Prize. Yes. Long listed for this book. Yes. At the moment. I mean, yeah.

So if you don't know her, I would also say if you don't know her, don't start with this book. No. I would start with some others. Well, I think the thing that I have to say, firstly, having with her other novels, which are you stay with one character. Yes. And are just amazing storytelling and that the characters feel so real. You really love the central characters.

You really care about them. This novel is more disjointed. Yes. Because it moves from several different characters. Four women. Their lives sometimes at different points. So it's not like it's, for instance, it's not just an overlap of, you know, like Cocoa Mellas. The sisters are all experiencing life at the same time.

It's not like that. Yeah, we're not getting different perspectives of the same thing. Yeah. We jump around a lot. There is some overlap of those stories, but not loads. It's almost sort of like, felt like a bit form on logs, you know, and you get four sort of disparate monologues, but they have met on the same day,

but they didn't know, is that kind of... At points to me, it felt a bit... This is going to sound like a negative, and I would never be negative, but a bit like a scrapbook, and that things are sort of pinned in, and those things are always very well written. I mean, the writing style is so beautiful,

even when writing about very unbeautiful things. But she's a writer doesn't have to prove herself. She's not having to prove she can tell a story. We know she can tell a story. Oh, yes. I'm not saying this is by accident. No, no, that's what I mean. She has done this on purpose in order.

This is why I say scrapbook, because sometimes it felt like a bingo card of these are the different things that can happen to the female body or that women can experience because so many of them are covered. Yes, oh, it covers a lot. It starts with a character, and again, forgive me, I think it's Chiamaka. Chiya Maka is what it looks like when it's written down.

So Chiamaka, who is Nigerian and also has grown up in Nigeria, but has moved to America to study. Wealthy background, wealthy parents. She wants to be a travel writer. She wants to be a travel writer. And her travel writing is really funny. Yes. And it's so interesting.

Sorry to jump onto the travel writing. But she's writing a kind of travel writing, which I found so funny, but that people don't want to publish because they want a black woman to be writing a different kind of journalism. Yeah. Or they want her to send her to like a war zone

or talk about Africa. And she wants to go to Copenhagen going to talk about how many coffee shops there are. Or going to a really expensive restaurant and feeling nothing. The title comes from her because she's doing her dream count of her ex-relationships. Yes. And we get a lot of this world of Chiamaka's story. And again, I'm very scared to say anything.

So when were you sad to leave her world? No, I was annoyed with Chiamacker's world. I was relieved to leave Chia-Mackett. Okay, can I guess the problem? Yeah. Because this would be my problem. It didn't pass the Bechdale test. Oh.

Because it was her life is told through the story of old relationships, which means each little chapter of her life is about the man she was with. And I kept being like, fuck off shitmen. I know men are shit. I can, I can, yeah. Well, also for me, Chiameca, and again, none of this is, this is like as if we knew, we're talking about her as if we're a real person. We need to keep touching like, you know, rosary beads or something to go,

I'm not taking the Lord's name in vain. I need a copy of half a yellow son that I can take my oath on. She's, and Chimamanda is one of my favorite writers. She's incredible, incredible writer. Yeah. So when I criticise Chiamaka, I'm criticising her as if she's a friend. Yeah. And assuming that the author has done this on purpose, it's not a failure of the author.

No, no, no. She's an irritating character. You've had a irritating. I just found she's so obsessed. And I feel like we have, these aren't spoilers, but we do have to talk like, because it's not a book where like there's a sort of linear plot. So we can't like, oh, we can say the beginning, but we can't say the end. She's obsessed with romance. and she's obsessed with finding a man.

I just got really bored of it because I was like, I feel like we're being told a lot of the time that she's like an interesting character or other people tell us later on but all we ever hear is her boyfriend. Well, I think actually that I felt with all of the characters what you're seeing is the effects of a patriarchy

that doesn't care what you are as a woman and especially I say that's their background. They're not from Romford like me or Barnet like you. So I don't think we were told in the same way. none of my family said to me, where's your husband, when are you going to get married? You're 32 now.

Why don't you have a baby? Have you thought about adoption? I didn't have that from aunts saying, yeah, just adopt someone. Your life is empty as one of the characters has. And so, and so of course we're like, whoa, but I think that's their reality for these women and for some women now.

I just found it relentless. Yeah, it is relentless. It's not your part. Because the writing's so fantastic, when someone is, you know, stuck in a relationship, they shouldn't be in because they don't have the right feelings. Are they a horrible man or like a good man who's a bit boring or, a man who seems really good but actually is maybe putting her down a little bit.

You are stuck there. Yes, I felt stuck. I was like, oh, I just want you to leave this man. And you don't, you don't get a lot of Chiamaca aside from what she is with her boyfriends and her relationships. That is how we're told about her. Can I read you a bit? So she has a horrible boyfriend called Darnell.

Yeah, Darnell's like, you think the worst of her boyfriends, I'd say the worst. Yeah, the worst. He squashed my smallest pleasures and I helped him flatten them, sinking myself into the mean crevices of his will. I look back now and see my weakness in such sharp relief, being pliant and docile in exchange for nothing. The clarity of hindsight is bewildering. If only we could see our failings while we are still failing.

Oh, Chandlerland. Yeah. Really beautiful stuff. What I felt... I just was like, I've had enough of this bloody woman. So I've had similar experiences in relationships where once comedy started going well and I had more money to be in a relationship with someone where if you're going to go and do a nice thing, you know, holiday or a restaurant, you're going to pay for it,

which they hate. but they still come. So it's like you go out to dinner with someone who hates that you're paying for dinner and ruins the dinner. It still eats the fucking food. Yeah, and who came and then says, this is too expensive.

I feel bad that you're paying. I don't want to get another cocktail because I know that you're going to pay for it. It's like you lose twice, you lose from paying and then you lose for it being crap. Or, yeah, paying for a holiday for someone who then the whole time sort of hates you for paying for it for them.

And that's Chiamaica suffers on that a lot because she's come to a very wealthy background. And she's generous with her money. But I do think that's, men being so obviously affected by their patriarchy as well because then they don't grow up going sometimes women will pay for you and it's a lovely treat and it's because they care about you. It's like this is not the order of the universe. It's weaponised against them, particularly with Darnell, this horrible boyfriend who really, yeah, cannot handle

that she has, that she's from wealth and that. Especially because it's like anti-black, hasn't she's not a proper black African? Because there's some kind of like inbuilt, well then you must, you or your family must have done very bad things. African-American and there is a lot of discussion which obviously you and I have no experience of but there's a lot of discussion of him as an African-American character kind of taunting her because she's a rich Nigerian and he makes the assumption which we do not know is true that her family must have profited from the sale and enslavement of his family and it's I feel like Chimamanda is making a comment on Americans well definitely in terms of his group of very woke friends yes there's um

She goes for the woke. Yes. And she shows, I mean, I don't want to jump too far ahead, but it's amazing actually to have these discussions through very real people and it's really uncomfortable to read. But, you know, white people's wokeness and what they will allow black people with lived experience to talk about. Well, also I think she's doing something really interesting

of, this is something we've done before, of like, the black experience. It is not a monolith. She is talking about the black African experience and the black Nigerian experience. And also having come from wealth, which is another... But she's also very much... I love that. I can't remember.

I don't think I marked it. Where she talks about this, the American... Basically, if it's the American idea of the history, the pain, the suffering is the only narrative. And there is a suffocation of her narrative as a black African woman that is not allowed to exist when she comes to America.

And that happens to all four women. It does happen to all four. There's... Towards the... end, the bit I'm thinking of is when, and it must have happened to her actually, because she's saying that there was a novel that was about the Biafran war in Nigeria, and someone said, I don't understand whether Igbo people were being slaughtered, and she says, well, you know, it's a genocide similar to what happened to the Jews in Europe, and people are offended and said, you cannot say that.

And I absolutely, that seemed to be something that was very much from a place of truth. Yeah, I think she's just constantly, this is what she's very good at, Amanda, I've constantly make, because she puts it so beautifully, of kind of turning the angle like 25 degrees so that you're like, oh, I understand why those white work people are saying that, I understand that narrative. Or why they're just scared? They're just, they have fear of like, we aren't allowed to do that. But she's sort of obscuring it and like you said, and being like, there's another argument here, which is like you don't know. Yeah, you don't know.

You don't know. And Darnell, this character was very interesting because he sort of has a goat, like you said, for not being the right kind of Nigerian. the right kind, you're rich, that's wrong. And as if that experience must be destroyed and extinguished and not seeing how colonial that attitude is to be like, well, that narrative is not what we want, so I will extinguish it, and not allowing space for any other narrative

other than we come from poverty and pain. There's another character that we follow on next from Chiamaca is Zikora, who is a friend who has also grown up in Nigeria, moved to America, but moved younger. and so it's very and it's now a very high profile lawyer in America

and then we have a cousin Omelago yeah that sounds that sounds right and I'm really sorry if we're saying we're saying names how they've written down

Ameligur Amelago is what it looks like written down so her cousin goes to America much later after being quite established very established

very high up in the Nigerian banking industry very successful and each of them is made to feel that their Africanness in America is wrong

There is something wrong about the way they talk to people. It is wrong that they have staff. It is wrong that they have door people. It's wrong the way that they talk to people. The Americans are constantly making them feel like that isn't fair. And I think this book is constantly saying, why do you get to say what's right and wrong? Omnaga uses the phrase, which I thought is really interesting.

She says, oh, you can trust Muslims. Yeah. Muslim staff are better. And she says it to shock a boyfriend. Well, no, Omoggan is just saying it. Yeah. And then Darnell, this African-American is really shocked. by that. And there's this interesting dynamic of Amiga being like, but it is true. And that is

how it is in my country. This is my normal. And so she works in banking. So something else that she says is basically, and it's to one of her, I think it's one of her own partners, but about everyone does lie in Nigeria, that everyone is, you know, fibbing. It's part of our culture. Yeah, that's it. And that's an example of something which like, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I see what you mean. Like, yeah. Because if you said to me, are people in Rompford very cheeky they don't like people

who are up themselves anyone who achieves anything the first thing when you see them is you're still you and now would go yeah that's what we're like that's a truism

about a place that I'm from whereas I can't do that about any kind of Nigerian I don't feel like oh yeah what a good observation or what an untrue thing

that character is actually dissembling do you see what I mean yeah I do but I think that's what's so interesting about this book is that to have these characters just be allowed to like I guess take up their space

and be like, why is that wrong? I know, I love the characters doing it. I'm trying to say I don't feel qualified to be able to talk about it. I'm not saying, I'm saying that even as a reader. I guess I trust her as a Nigerian. That's what I'm going on. I trust her, but we are making a podcast talking about something. I just wanted to flack.

If I say that's really wrong, I don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah. We're going on, we're going on Chimamanda's view of a country. And, yeah, and our own arrogance. And ignorance, yeah, absolutely ignorance. That's what I feel like she's constantly putting the rug under of like, Why do you get to define what is right and wrong? Yeah.

And that you say lying or saying that Muslim people are trustworthy is racist, but you are not the person in this country living in this situation. Why is that like? And the hypocrisy of America, because what she sees is you have people who are to jump to Zadir to the hotel maid, who is a servant. But she's, no one, no one calls her that. Whereas Omeligor has staff and it's very clear.

It's like a clear feudal system. She's in charge. They are sometimes trying to trick her. She's sometimes making sure she pays them enough but also pays them extra stuff so that they're nice to her. Whereas the hotel made, this American system which is held up as fair is not fair. This character Zalia 2 is, you know, goes through a horrific situation and she's underpaid. She's overworked. She lives in this like she's so grateful to be there even though this country does not welcome her.

So I think what you're Amanda, what I felt is doing is going, don't fucking come here and say you're better because your hypocrisy is just hidden. Well, that's it. One of the bits, she does discuss, and I've heard this before, that pre-European slavery, that there was slavery and that people try to lessen it, that slaves weren't treated as badly as the European slavery. Having read, listened to the entire Empire podcast, there's been slavery in existence forever.

Right? What happened was white people made it in industry. Yes. So that's the thing you cannot deny. Yes, there was slavery in Africa. There's a very difficult conversation to go. Oh, that slavery wasn't as bad as the latest slavery is. But you can say that the industrialisation of the slavery with the, what's called like the middle way? Yeah. It starts in 1619 with white, French, English, Portuguese, Belgium, Belgium, settlers.

What they did was they made people cat-like product. But before that, you would have a slave, but they would have, like a house or they could there was this you know they might earn enough that they can buy their way out of it they made it like no you are the same as a plant pot like i just stuff you in as many as i can like they completely changed the system and before that there were people who were like i'm i'm lower status i'm from enslaved but that doesn't mean that you own me forever you don't own my children like that's what we changed it our culture changed it i'm just saying that the that conversation when someone's going,

slavery is still bad, but because it's not as barbaric as what came later, it's sort of an awkward conversation for someone to go, to be trying to minimize the having of slaves at all. Yeah, well, I think what's really... What's really interesting, what Darnel does is, again, he's accusing these rich Nigerian characters of, well, you probably owned my people and what,

oh my God, does so, sort of incredibly is point out that her grandfather was nearly insane by a different tribe. and that you can't, well, she's that great face. She's like, it's with all the same pain. Yeah. And I was like, yeah, that why are we having a competition here

when, like, it's quite clear who did the bad thing. Yeah. We know who did the bad thing. We've got, so many fucking documents of when this happened. So why are you trying to, like we said, what is good black, what is bad black, what is okay that you're, it's not okay that Chiamaca has a house in America, that a maid just stays in in case they need it.

That to him is offensive. But he's also being a terrible boyfriend and not respecting her just as a human. So I think she's bringing up this constant like complicated characters. It is a book. It is a complicated book in that every single element of it you could have a huge discussion about including a lot of the things that happen in terms of the female body.

have someone who has a horrible fibroids. You have discussion about black women's mortality in pregnancy and childbirth, the fact that they're not listened to, when they say that they're in pain, female genital mutilation. Eating disorders. Yeah, eating disorders. Obviously, a variety of sexual assaults. Can I just read this bit out? Because this is about, they're two characters, we don't know, but they, two girls die in Lagos from trying to have Brazilian butt surgery. Oh yeah. And there's a younger character talking about it. Um, so this character has shocked, basically has happened. And she's talking about teenage girls. It says, they know irony and hyperbole and sass, but self-love is strange to them. I think of myself at 16. It was a slower pace

time and our troubles were different, of course, but we weren't so willing to believe the worst of ourselves. If our daughters do not know how beautiful they are, just as they are, then surely we have failed. I agree with you, but what do we do? I wanted some answers. There's no answers, but yeah, like there's a lot of stuff about the female body. Yes. And the variety of different experiences and how the world inflicts pain upon it.

So you've got the two sisters, Skadiah two, I think, and her little sister Binta, and one of them doesn't have any pain with her periods. They just come and they start and she bleeds every mother and her sister. is like an absolute agony. And right from that, it's like, yeah, something, this biological can affect us so hugely differently. Characters who can't, you know, get pregnant or are told they won't be able to have children. And when we've seen already the pressure that it's a woman's job to get married,

especially if it's in a situation where you have to marry someone in your close bloodline, and it's for the strength of your family. Same tribe, same language, same country. And then I thought it's quite funny, isn't it? because, like, Omligar has, you know, is still not married, that they get to the point where they're, like, just as long as, like, anybody who we don't even care anymore, if he's Catholic, just marry someone.

Whereas before it's like, he must be Igbo, he must be Catholic, he must be from this right area. And, yeah, the relatives are getting so desperate. I didn't know what the drug loud was. I think it's marijuana. The way it was being used was very casual. Like everyone was like, oh, yeah, I've got a weed dealer. At an orgy.

Yeah, there's orgies. Yeah. There's a lot of sex as well. Yeah. Yeah. Because sex is something that happens to the woman's body. It felt to me like it was all being told in the same thing. The pleasure or the possible pleasure or not pleasure

is such an important part of a woman's biography, isn't it? Well, also, yeah, we have Sakura, a character who gets pregnant. Yeah. And, yeah, is left alone with that situation. Is it Kwame, the boy, the... So she's in a sort of relationship, and then there's this really interesting discussion afterwards because she felt like she'd had a conversation with him

telling him, shall I come off the pill then? And he was like, whatever you want. She was saying, you know, it's messing up my hormones. You know, because it does. The pill does affect lots of people very negatively. So should I stop taking it? And he says whatever you want. So she feels like they've had a discussion about her stopping.

And then when she tells him she's pregnant, he's so shocked and surprised and then cuts her out of his life completely, never answers the phone to her again and doesn't, you know, become involved in the child's life. And Amilagor says maybe he didn't know. What we take for granted that men understand things about, that we understand who told them when? Well, Omnagor is running a...

Dear Men website. I'm on your side. When men write to her and she's trying to sort of like give them advice because she decides that pornography is teaching them everything wrong. Yeah, she's really... So that storyline, so she's interested, she wants to do, she was a study, do a PhD in pornography as a teaching tool because of men that she's had relations with

who either did learn it from porn and also like an age difference that younger men do things because they learn it from porn I mean I mean maybe when you pick this book up you don't expect this stuff spitting and choking and stuff

slapping tits she gets a tits slapped by younger man what are you doing and then everyone's like oh he watches porn do you not realise but older men watching different kind of porn

where women have pubs and go on top nostalgic yeah nostalgic porn where they didn't have to yeah so so I mean there is so

So, so much. But I think sometimes that did pull me out of the story. Yes, I was going to say. It's like four books, isn't it? Yeah. It's like four books in one book. And an essay in stories. Yes.

Because so we have Chiamaka who wants to be in love. Zikora, who is left with a baby. Omligo, who is trying to figure out how pornography works. And then we have Zadir too, who is the hotel made. But before that, we get a big part of her past. So actually, we know her as a child, we know her sister. We know that she, her mother and her, is it, her grandma together perform. FGM on her.

Cut, cut her genitals. She's assaulted before she moves to America and then assaulted again in the hotel. And she's the character that you find out at the end, if you didn't already know, is based on a very real person. It was a hotel maid and she accused Dominic Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her. And it was a massive, massive. I mean, it was the press. Her name is Nafisatou Diallo.

She was a guineaan immigrant who cleaned rooms in a prestigious hotel. in New York City and in May 2011 she accused Dominic Strauss-Kahn head of the International Monetary Fund of Sexual Assault and the case was basically dropped. He had some very powerful lawyers and it was decided that she had lied She was unreliable, not about the fact that that assault happened

because she lied about something else. But exactly like the story in the book I mean, and this is just going to be trigger-worn in Central for everyone. I've said that all of these at the beginning episode but she spat his seaman onto the floor she was only in the room for 11 minutes Like no one hears that and ever thinks this is a consensual thing. You can see where someone would be obsessed with it.

And I'm obsessed with the sadness of it, that that happens to a woman who is already, you know, she's working as a maid, she's working hard for her daughter to support her life. And this is how America treats her. Well, there's a small essay at the back that Chimamanda. I found that essay quite odd. It sort of says this book is about my mother. Yeah. Who had very sadly passed away.

And then it talks about this real case, which is very close to the character of that attitude. And there's some scenes that she hasn't changed. She hasn't changed. But what she wanted, Amanda says in the essay at the back, she wanted to give this person a humanity that she was denied in the media, which I think she's done an amazing job of. Yeah.

But I, yeah, I was like, oh, this feels like a separate book by itself. But we kind of get off. We get, like you said, so this hotel maid who is assaulted also sometimes works for Chiamaka, so is known to her friend and her cousin as well. So they start trying to. help her with her assault case and give her advice as someone who's a lawyer in

America, someone who's lived in America, someone who's been to America and rejected it. But I think, yeah, it felt like a kind of collidoscope. Because there's so much to squeeze in. Yeah. Of like what happens to African women in America. Yeah. And you see like the one who gets there earlier, Seqora, is the most comfortable, even though, you know, bad stuff still happens to her.

That stuff could have happened in Nigeria. A man could have left her pregnant. And then you have Tiamaka who is Yeah, sort of told what to say and what to do And then Omligor who comes much later Literally is sick, the country makes her sick She's ostracized at university People think she's racist

Like they don't want her to hear any stories of her country's Class system or genocide That they just literally shut her down And then you have this hotel-made character Who came, you know, as an opportunity Because the man she loved was there And it seemed to me of like yeah it's not quite

it's not quite her normal novel but then why should it be but I think it's I definitely reading it was like oh this feels like I don't know like it is a very mature take on something but I missed I kept thinking

it's Brechtian it's Brechtian it's very Brechtian Sarah it's very Brechtia sorry to go all university and everybody because I kept thinking oh she's just not letting me enjoy my page turning book in the bath

and it's like she doesn't want you to enjoy it Sarah she wants you to think she wants you to speak to someone about something She wants you to go and really look something up. Like Amelago has that experience at university where she tells a true experience about how her uncle was murdered and then how the person who murdered him was treated

and it's too much for Americans. They don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear it. And there are some things in history. This is the thing. People are processing horror. And that might be an African person or it might be a European person. It might be a person of Jewish heritage.

And we have so. much going on and either we pretend it didn't happen and that things are better now, but all of these characters' parents are also processing it. Yeah. Have you been reading interviews? I've read a couple. Not that many. She doesn't do, don't need to. It doesn't need to know much. But it has said this is about the grief from her mum as well. So how did, so, I mean, grief is a special subject for mastermind. So, so. Well, how do people feel when they die? Grief. Well, done 10 points. Well, also this thing, and I've loved this because I've seen a couple of people say recently and actually it proves that conversations about grief are getting better and you've been a

massive part of that. Not that you should get an award certificate. But seeing people saying, you know, I've only just started unpacking that suitcase. This is a lifelong thing. It's amazing now that people at least understand and are able to talk about it. So Tim Amanda's mother dies as she doesn't go, oh, it was a couple years ago. She's like, oh, it's raw, it's new. It's coming up in my writing. What's really interesting, if you are a big fan of hers. So she wrote notes on grief after her father died and she wrote it in the year after her father died. And I really recommend that book to people who are in the in the throes of the beginning because it's so raw and it's not it doesn't have a perspective it's just like this is what grief is and it's really painful and then her

mother died quite suddenly and unexpectedly after her father so this is obviously what's like this is the mother book notes on grief is very much like her first big grief my father has gone and i thought it's quite interesting to me because the grief is quite deep in this i finally it's it's not as obvious of like oh this person is sad because of this but she's sort of exploring the bit that really touched me was the zikora storyline so she's left by this man oh it's gorgeous she has a difficult relationship with her mom they're not particularly close but her mom comes to be at the birth and it's just very there and present and for weeks and months after us and she says to her and she says i've got a long return i've got a long visa yeah i'm here i'm not going anywhere

I'm not going anywhere. And she starts to see her mother and this brand new light. Her dad, beloved father, had had another wife. Yes, yes. Because they couldn't get pregnant again. She finds out that her mother had a hysterectomy after her birth. And she never told her father. But seeing her mum all of the time and just the suffering,

she tells a story about going to the second wife's party and her mom had asked her not to go. And then coming home again, it's the things you do as a child because you don't know how much pain your parents have. And actually you shouldn't. She's not trying to give you a easy story. She is like shoving your head in these stories. Even the ending, which I would say technically.

I found the ending. Oh, it's like being punched with a happy ending. And not in it not being truthful in that it's so truthful. And it manages to find sunlight in something that is the bleakest thing. There's a line in the essay as well, which is something that Anophisotu's daughter saying to her that she just wanted her mom to stop crying. Please, mum, would you just stop crying? And how she just didn't stop thinking about it for a decade.

And it's like, yeah, there's certain things that speak to you so much to that relationship, like how much your mother's pain can't help but affect you and how you need your mom to be okay. And exactly the same way that a mum needs a child to be okay. And neither is okay if the other one is not okay. So when something huge happens with either, yeah, really gorgeous. And I think maybe that is the thing with raw grief. Yeah. Maybe you don't want to explore it head on.

Here's a character experiencing the absence of a mother. Yeah, that's what I meant. It's like it's not an obvious story. And yeah. She's sort of like buried it in the book slightly. Like it's not like, oh, a character's mum, guys. But when she was writing, it must have surprised her for it to keep sort of bubbling up and going, oh, wow, here it is again. That's what she said.

I read an interview. She was like, I just didn't realize. I didn't expect this book to be about my mother. But it is. I thought that similarly, it's a shame, isn't it? Because obviously we're also interested in authors' real lives. And it does affect you reading. But the same thing about women having children in their 40s.

It came up several times where people were like, and. And I think with Amelago, which is like, well, I'm 46 now. It's past it. But that's when Amanda had her twins. So I felt like that kept coming up when there is just this line in the sand that sort of is there and isn't there for women in their 40s. I got really angry with my husband. And this always happens when I'm reading something that's deeply feminist. Because I have a really, really, really good husband, but he will never understand. And with this one, because I had to complain to him the other day that I read so many books that he doesn't know, he doesn't know what's in my head because he doesn't read. And with this one, he kept

saying, so what's happening now? I was like, you don't want to know because I can't, I cannot. Are you ready? And that's what actually. More female pain is happening. In terms of that, being a woman, a female pain, I think that's what I just have a big flag of awareness for as a white woman who has never been to Africa. Yeah, yeah.

Just big areas. If another woman said to me, you don't even understand what that book was about. I'd be like, I think you're right. Oh, yeah, 100%. Or you can't even begin to understand. I really want to read everything to Amanda ever writes, but with an awareness of I don't think she's writing necessarily for me. And also feminism, it hasn't finished.

It's like we are at the beginning of something and we keep being told. Well, the link with colonialism, the link with this idea of like you can't separate it from capitalism. Like you can't, it's not a separate thing that exists over here. And so all the women are happy. It's like, no, no. Like this woman, this hotel maid is in a shit life. Yeah. This is shit.

And then when she tries to say someone sexually sold, me she's given like and America says they all say well you might get money as if that is justice well they assume that's the reason for doing it if you have no money what else for other reason

because yeah that's what people lead their country for to go and have better paid jobs and better social security and all of this stuff so I think it I think she's trying to like explode a myth but I agree with you it's not I thought that storyline with that character where so she's leaving

home to come to America with her sort of young love who's been resident in America for a long time and she's having to prepare what to say to get a visa I thought that it was so I mean when I say that it's well done because it's incredibly complicated so she has had FGM

and so that might but she's being told that might not be enough reason to have asylum in America or to get your visa status but she also has no problem with having had her no that's what I mean about her that isn't her misery and then there's a conversation with a male character about the fact that she would do that to her daughter.

Because otherwise she's unmarriageable. And a male character telling her women can get married now without that. And if something is absolute normal and everyone you know has done it and it's part of life, the unlearning of that. And then the Western, like, shock at it. But I think what you're doing so well is like, just because it discussed you doesn't mean you're right. And I just think that is such a thing that is very hard.

And to really gently, she's not banging you on the head with it. She's just showing you. But it also doesn't mean it is right. We're not saying, you know what? They can do. That should be. allowed, but she's just putting it out there of like, you're not allowed to say this person is less than you because their culture does that. Yeah. You're not, like, that's not a truth. And also,

a do-gooding Westerner can do incredible damage by going, oh, no, no, no, no, stop this. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, that, that is not how you solve things. That's what's, that storyline is so interesting because she goes to the visa desk and as soon as she says, oh, I was cut, she is given this sympathy and said, oh, you can have asylum. But, that's what. That's what's the, that's this character was like, huh, why did I, oh, that was easy. Like, I thought I'd have to say I'd been raped. Yeah, so she'd memorized with a tape, even though she actually had had experience of being raped. And we know that as the reader.

She hadn't told anyone. So she's memorizing someone else's rape by soldiers for a visa. That's why I thought was so incredibly complex about it, because that must be some people's reality. It must be a thing that you do. To prove she is, her life is so terrible, she must be welcomed into the heaven. And what does the heaven do to her? Yes. So it's like, yeah.

Yeah, it's very complex and very nuanced. And I think we should say, Jim Amanda has, you know, there has been some... We keep saying it like we know. Chimamanda, I don't know if I've ever said an author's name as much in a podcast. It's also because it's like, it's the beautiful consonance of the M's and the ends. But she, you know, she has been controversial, there has been some controversial situations. Which again, you could talk about forever and not necessarily solve. Yeah.

In terms of the controversies that have come in terms of some of her opinion. opinions or things that she's said. Yeah, things that she, especially within like certain. Well, actually, I'll give you an example. So Tim Amanda's book about feminism, she states all the time that human beings are not animals. And obviously, I completely disagree with her. See Sarah's book.

Animal. Because we evolved and we have evolved behaviors and because I don't believe in God, we're an ape. And our behavior doesn't make sense unless you understand us as an ape. But so I have a massive differing of an opinion with her. And then actually there was something when I was reading this where because she thinks human beings are closer to angels, which is what she said in that book, she writes about things bodily in really angelic language. The way even the way she describes like nerves or fear, she uses very otherworldly, almost mystical words sometimes. And I love that.

And actually it makes things that are horrible, sometimes almost magical in terms of the visceralness of them. She rises above the body, even when talking about the body. Yeah. And yet there's so much stuff in this that is like really disgusting body stuff that's really hard to deal with like five boys and periods and miscarriages. And periods with clots like proper. Yeah, yeah. Blading through onto chairs because it's so he. But yet like you said, you feel like you're being, oh God, I just, I think she's, I feel like I feel lucky to be alive in her time. I genuinely did love this book. And I do feel like, you know when you love her, this is like, this is like, when you love her, this is like, you love her. musician you love a band right I love her so much that even I didn't love this book and there are things that are confusing I feel like oh this is going to be one of those like that like transition

albums that you go back to because you're like oh they were going through this thing at this time so they did this book but like the next one is going to be like I feel like there's another one because I feel like she's jumping into sort of like a different style and so I feel like the next one is going to be like oh this could be the fruition this is what happens if you write novels and non-fiction and it's your state of the nation. You go, I'm using, I'm using woman's experience to discuss everything that's going on in two continents.

And, you know, it's been long listed for women's prize. There were some amazing books on that, but she's, she's just... She's a genius. She's a genius. She's phenomenal. And there are really, really brilliant writers we talk about, but without going like, wow, they've done this and wow, they've done that.

But she's, for me, it's like, like Dickens, Austin, and she is that level away. No one had blood clots in their period in Dickens. Oh, Sarah, great expectations, chapter seven. I think, I mean, there will be such a list of trigger warnings at the beginning. And I would say that, I would say, but this book isn't horrifically hard to read. And as like Carrie had sort of hugging it to her heart at the beginning. I love it.

I can't imagine a reader who wouldn't get great things from it. But I also think it will make you want to talk to people about what you're reading. Yeah, and that's why it's a great piece of literature. It's not like a story where you just go, oh, wow, what a great story. I disappeared for two hours. You're like, she is kicking me and telling me I have to think, kind of. And we do.

We will, Jim Amanda. As a humanity, we do. I know. Because there is stuff happening. If we keep us reading good books and watching things on Netflix. Well, that's what I feel like she's saying to the young generation. She's like, stop thinking you have the fucking answers. It's a angry book.

Oh, yes. It's angry. Yeah. And I felt like she was kind of telling us off. But then that's why I was interested in what your take on the grief was because, I mean, grief and anger are best friends. But don't you think that anger is someone who is grieving while also writing? Yeah, yeah.

Although it doesn't... Not that stages exist. But it feels like something has been processed. Oh, okay. Compared to notes on grief. Text me to Amanda. Let me know if you think that's right. Our WhatsApp, I'll send your voice now.

No, because the idea of her hearing any of this makes me want to put my head in a bucket. I never want her to hear any of my opinions or the fact that I would audaciously dare to have any of her. I know I'm not worthy. Just, you know, actually, should we just delete it? this podcast. It was lovely to talk to you about the book, but we can't put this out in the world. We can't put this out. We can just put out a sentence going and actually just edit all out out apart from She's a Genius. Anyway, that was our dream count. Was it a dream count? Thank you for listening to the Weirdo's Book Club.

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is out now. We will be back again soon with a brand new series, but in the meantime, you can book tickets to see me on tour if you miss me. Head to sarahpasco.com.com. I'm going everywhere. You can also go back and find all the books we've discussed so far on our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club. Do check that out to find out about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing in the new series. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with.