PATIENCE IS A SUBTLE THIEF

Old-fashioned romance and street-level crime are woven into a coming-of-age saga set amid the political turmoil of early 1990s Nigeria.

The title of Ishola-Ayodeji’s captivating debut novel is something of a double-entendre, as it refers to both the heroine’s first name and her vexing state of being. Patience Adewale is an 18-year-old U.S.–born Nigerian student living in the city of Ibadan with her stern, domineering, and politically influential father, who demands two things of her: that she get her accounting degree from the University of Lagos and that she stop asking him (or anybody else) about the specific whereabouts of her birth mother, Folami, whom he banished to America. Growing up wealthy, sheltered, and insulated from the grimmer realities of Nigerian society, Patience believes her true destiny has been to make and design clothes in the U.S. and is willing to do whatever it takes to locate her mom and fulfill her ambition. She arrives in Lagos convinced that she won’t find what she wants in a classroom and instead makes her way to the seamier side of town to reconnect with Kash, her ne’er-do-well cousin, who engages in petty crimes with his roommate, Emeka. They share their living space with Emeka’s handsome, smarter brother, Chike, an upstanding, hardworking motorcycle taxi driver unable to find work worthy of his university degree in petroleum science. Chike is far more interested in Patience (and the feeling is mutual) than he is in pulling scams with his brother. Yet Emeka and Kash persuade Patience and Chike to help them separate a million Nigerian naira (about $2,400) from a local bank with a phony check. Though Chike’s dead-set against the plan, a wary-but-game Patience overcomes her own jittery reservations and carries out the masquerade required of her for the con, so badly is she wanting to leave home. (“The irony,” she reflects at one point, “needing to do something unlike herself to actually find herself.”) But one big score isn’t enough for Kash and Emeka, and as both Patience and Chike become more exasperated in their efforts to realize their dreams through conventional means, the deeper involved all four become in bigger and riskier illegalities. All this personal struggle takes place within the backdrop of the 1993 presidential election aimed at setting Nigeria on course for a democratic government after years of military rule. Ishola-Ayodeji is deft, shrewd, sometimes witty, and always observant about the social, economic, and political obstacles to Nigerians wishing only to live honorably and decently.

A poignant, revealing, and rueful tale of how much the political can affect the personal.