Swallow

Starred review from November 1, 2010
In Atta's spirited and largehearted second novel (after the collection, News from Home), two young woman office workers navigate the rapids of the urban jungle of Lagos. Rose, and the narrator, Tolani, live and work together, making the long, arduous daily commute by bus and sharing "seats, sweat, and gossip." They often don't agree: Rose, at 30, flits from man to man to avoid falling into what she calls "the black hole" of dependency and inertia, and disapproves of Tolani's longtime boyfriend, Sanwo, who won't propose. However, Rose's irrepressible temper gets her fired, leaving her vulnerable to the manipulation of a new boyfriend, OC, who convinces her to mule drugs to England. Tolani has her own woes: she breaks up with Sanwo after he loses her savings; she has to work with a new, lecherous boss; her aging mother is ever more fragile; and she learns her father, now dead, may not have actually been her father. But will she take OC up on his offer of quick money? Tolani's tale encompasses towns and villages, corruption and superstition, deceit and loyalty, all beautifully layered and building toward a wallop you never see coming.

December 1, 2010

Atta (Everything Good Will Come, 2007) focuses on two women fighting against sexual harassment and trying to make a meaningful life in Nigeria.

Rose and Tolani (the novel's narrator) share both a friendship and a workplace—a bank in Lagos—but at the beginning of the novel, Rose is sacked for refusing the advances of the repulsive Mr. Salako, a senior manager. While Rose is somewhat relieved to be out of an awkward situation, she's mortified when Tolani is named to her position—and Tolani also finds herself harassed by the relentless Salako. Rose is fundamentally unhappy being Nigerian and instead wishes "she had been born in Czechoslovakia because the name sounded sophisticated." Besides Salako, Tolani has problems with her lover Sanwo, who can't quite commit either to a job or to her. She wants to give him an ultimatum that she hopes will result in marriage, but she's fearful of the possible consequences because she finds it hard to imagine her life without him. Meanwhile, the increasingly desperate Rose takes up with OC, recently returned from a successful yet mysterious business deal in America. OC's sleaziness makes Tolani uneasy, and her friendship with Rose—like her relationship with Sanwo—begins to falter. Tolani's intuitions about OC turn out to be correct, for he's a drug dealer who wants to use them both as mules to transport heroin in condoms to the States. Neither Rose nor Tolani can quite get the hang of swallowing the undigestible packages, and Tolani eventually decides on moral grounds that she doesn't want to be exploited in this way. In increasingly distressed financial condition, Rose winds up being OC's drug courier but dies when the package "explodes" inside her. By the end of the narrative, Tolani, who comes from a small Yoruba village, decides that life in Lagos is too wretched and corrupt, so she returns home to her mother, looking to start afresh—and include Sanwo in her future.

Atta writes lyrically and eloquently about ordinary life.

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January 1, 2011
Nigerian-born Atta, now living in the U.S., excels at telling stories of her native land, this time centering on bank clerk Tolani Ajao and Rose, her friend, roommate, and colleague at Federal Community Bank in Lagos, with interspersed accounts by Tolanis mother, Arike, in her native village of Makoku. After Rose is fired for slapping her boss, Tolani gets her job and puts the man on notice when he sexually harasses her, displaying the same strength her mother showed as a young woman who shocked townspeople by riding a Vespa in her village. With Rose out of work and Tolani suspended, they consider drug running to make ends meet. As Tolani struggles with the morality of being a mule and the difficulty in swallowing the contraband, she must also deal with her boyfriend, who has lost her savings, while being haunted by questions of her own parentage. Atta captures the sights, sounds, and smells of her native land in the 1980s, with its War against Indiscipline in effect, as it straddles Western ways and native customs. A meandering novel with a painful punch.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)