Welcome Back!

Heatwave Delirium & a look at Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Last Novel: Dream Count

It’s been some time since this newsletter last went out, you might remember it as ‘Little Rat Big Dreams’ and while the Little Rat (Roddy) is still out there, he’s in fact had some Big Dreams realised recently, and has been cast as a minor role in the new Ratatouille 2 movie that’s currently in the works, and he’s moved to Paris! Congrats Roddy!

In his absence, I’ve decided to take over the newsletter and will do my best to preserve his signature style of humour and sincerity. You can expect plenty of book recs and reviews, some general life musings, and of course, the occasional pop-in from old Rod too.

On today’s agenda, I have some thoughts on London’s most recent heatwave, as well as a look at Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s latest novel, Dream Count - I try my best not to fawn, but you know how it is.

I hope you enjoy! It’s good to be back x

MUSINGS - Heatwave Delirium

My brain turned to mush in the London heatwave - a gooey mush with only one goal: survival. In anticipation of heatwave-ageddon, I ordered the cheapest fan available on Amazon - a small desk fan that I carried from room to room like a chihuahua in a handbag. I also eliminated any unnecessary movement. The only permitted activities were: sitting, lying down, and transitioning between the two. Any movement beyond that was done very slowly and with great, visible resignation.

Ice packs were the other weapon in my arsenal. Wrapped in tea towels, I shoved them between the covers of my bed before going to sleep (and honestly, that’s a hot - cold? - tip for you, because it worked incredibly well).

When the heat finally broke, it felt euphoric. Grey skies? Gorgeous. A spot of rain? Literally douse me in it. There’s something about seeing the London parks with yellowing grass and dusty paths that leaves me deeply unsettled. It’s like a primitive instinct inside me stirs - the same one that hates seeing dry riverbeds. (I prefer them bountiful.)

On the morning the heat broke, I took a few laps around the park with a new spring in my step and surveyed the grass like some smug landowner (I do not, for the record, own the park). From my perch on a bench, I thought to myself, Juuuust you wait - she’ll be green again soon.

It strikes me as slightly silly that I’ve felt such responsibility for the grass during this time - that I’ve spent so much time thinking about it. But why not? The grass belongs to all of us, after all. Temperatures are rising, missiles are flying, the world feels increasingly disjointed and insane - so maybe the only thing we can do, the only thing that feels impactful, is care for the stuff right beneath our feet.

Who knew the grass-chat would get so deep? There’s a joke in there about grass-roots or something, I’m sure of it.

BOOKS - Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My favourite author released a new novel!! Is there anything more exciting? And I had the absolute joy of seeing her live in London discussing it. Honestly, amazing.

Dream Count is a novel twelve years in the making. In that time, a lot changed for Adichie: she had three children, there was a global pandemic (spoiler alert) and, devastatingly, she lost both of her parents within nine months of each other. During those years, she experienced a deep creative silence - not quite "writer’s block" (a term she dislikes), but a profound loss of words. It wasn’t until after her mother’s death in 2021 that she began writing fiction again. As Adichie tells it, her mother - understanding the weight of grief her death would bring - somehow helped guide her back to her voice.

In the author’s note, Adichie writes:

“Novels are never really about what they are about. At least for this writer. Dream Count is, yes, about interlinked desires of four women, but, in a deeply personal way not obvious, at least not immediately so, to the reader, it is really about my mother.”

So there you have it, it’s a novel packed with joy, grief and love - and we haven’t even gotten to the plot yet! So, let’s begin:

Dream Count follows the lives of four women - Chiamaka, Zikora, Omelgalor and Kadiatou - and at the heart of the novel lies the idea of each woman’s “dream count”: a quiet and often invisible tally of hopes and desires accumulated over a lifetime, many of which have been gradually eroded or quietly shelved. These dreams, more often than not, are deferred due to the countless inadequacies of the people and systems around them - especially, and repeatedly, due to the men in their lives. So while this is a novel about women, it is equally about how men shape and distort women’s lives - often enabled by the expectations society teaches us to uphold.

When we meet each character, they are, in some way, seen to have fallen short of the expectations their families had for them, particularly around marriage and motherhood. But throughout the novel, Adichie seems to ask: And so what?

The women themselves begin to ask this too. They prod and poke at the architecture of their dreams, questioning where those desires came from, who they were meant to please, and whether they still - or ever - truly belonged to them.

The first character we meet is Chiamaka, a wealthy, radiant and charismatic Nigerian living in America as a travel writer. We see her adrift in the beginning of the global pandemic, ruminating on her list of past lovers, all of whom have fallen short of her longing “to be known, truly known by another human being.”

Zikora, her best friend, is a brilliant and successful high-powered lawyer. She is desperate to marry and live a conventional Nigerian middle-class life: “first a lucrative and prestigious job, then a splashy Catholic wedding, followed shortly by two children, or maybe three.” She too has had a string of past boyfriends (“thieves of time”), but when we meet her - in the throes of heartbreak and betrayal - it is clear that life has not worked out as she had hoped.

Omelgalor, Chiamaka’s outspoken cousin, is a powerhouse working at the top of a corrupt Nigerian banking organisation, from which she embezzles money to give to small, women-owned businesses. She’s unapologetically bold, unfiltered, and confident. Yet as the years go by, the image she’s crafted begins to splinter - and she’s forced to ask whether she truly knows herself.

Finally there is Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, a Fula woman from a village in Guinea, she was granted asylum in America and is proudly raising her daughter there, content with the steady rhythm of her life. However, when unthinking tragedy strikes, it threatens to take away everything she’s built. Kadiatou’s story is the emotional centerpiece of the novel. Her character is based on the Guinean hotel worker allegedly assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2011, and her inclusion in the novel is a powerful, deliberate move by Adichie.

Kadiatou’s portrayal is handled with grace, sensitivity, and strength, and Adichie’s depiction of the assault and its aftermath is vivid and brutal - yet handled with such care. In the novel’s afterword, Adichie writes that Kadiatou is “a gesture of returned dignity” and a way to “‘write’ a wrong in the balance of stories.”

I found this all profoundly moving. It exemplifies the power of stories - and how essential it is that we see ourselves within them. As Adichie so beautifully puts it:

“Stories die and recede from the collective memory merely for not having been told. Or a single version thrives because other versions are silenced. Imaginative retellings matter.”

In conclusion, what a read. I loved each of the characters and how in turns, they kept surprising me. Characters that I initially didn’t like, I ended up adoring, and just when I thought the story was going one way, it went an entirely different way. The writing is brilliant - funny, honest, vivid - and the love, grace, and power poured into this novel feels tangible. I can’t say its favourite novel of hers (that spot goes to Half of a Yellow Sun) but I don’t love it any less for it. Give it a read and let me know what you think!

P.S. If you don’t usually read the author’s note at the end of the book, I would highly recommend reading this one because it’s the absolute bow that wraps it all up.

Over and Out,

JP XX