On page 12, Chiamaka turns her attention to previous boyfriends, making a "dream count" of other possible lives. She sketches the male characters well, but I quickly lost interest. I learned very little about her.
The book has sections devoted to three other women in Chiamaka's orbit: Zikora, a Washington D.C. lawyer; Omelogor, a successful financier in Nigeria, and Kadiatou, a Guinean maid who works for Chiamaka. These descriptions make them sound like interesting people, but they never become full-bodied characters. In fact, their characters feel inconsistent.
There is a horrific incident at the center of the story, one that Adiche confirms is the "seed around which I would weave my imagination," but like so much of the intriguing background it gets buried under clichéd chatter about dating. I'm not sure what Adiche wants to say.
