The Thing Around Your Neck

My review of The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is out in the fall issue of The Quarterly Conversation (where Scott Esposito just interviewed me!). Here’s an excerpt:

Chimamanda has a clear, deceptively plain style that is well suited for investigating the subtleties of her characters’ motivations. Only rarely does a phrase call attention to itself and make you notice that what she is doing is far from easy.

One of these moments comes in the title story, “The Thing Around Your Neck,” shortly after the female narrator had been subjected to an unwanted sexual advance.

“You locked yourself in the bathroom until he went back upstairs,” says the narrator, “and the next morning, you left, walking the long windy road, smelling the baby fish in the lake.”

I’m not sure why the smell of the baby fish is so peculiar, yet so right. It may have something to do with the clean, lonely smell of a lake and its alien life in the early morning when no one else is around.