Americanah

I'll open with an excerpt of the review from The New York Times. "Americanah examines blackness in America, Nigeria and Britain, but it’s also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience — a platitude made fresh by the accuracy of [Chimamanda] Adichie’s observations.

'So an African-American is a black person with long generational lines in the United States, most likely with slave ancestors. She might write poetry about 'Mother Africa,' but she’s pleased to be from a country that gives international aid rather than from one that receives it. An American-African is an African newly emigrated to the United States. In her native country, she didn’t realize she was black — she fit that description only after she landed in America. In college, the African-American joins the Black Student Union, while the American-African signs up with the African Students Association.'"
This book is all about race and culture and how those concepts and realities can affect one's sense of self.

Ifemelu and Obinze are high school sweethearts, separated when Ifemelu goes to America, the land of Obinze's dreams, to attend college in Philadelphia. After years of near destitution, Ifemelu finds success, writing a wildly popular blog that makes observations about race in America, and then getting a fellowship to Princeton. Obinze attends university in London, overstays his student visa, works illegally to try and get money to buy a bride with EU citizenship, and is eventually caught and deported. Back in Nigeria, friends introduce him to a man who helps Obinze launch into a lucrative real estate career. Obinze marries and has a child, but he never forgets Ofemelu, who, for reasons unknown to him, cut off all contact just a couple of years after going to America. When Ifemelu decides to return home to Nigeria, they eventually reunite, and find they still love one another.

Although the writing is occasionally evocative and lyrical, and the observations about race and culture and human nature in the 3 countries (U.S., Nigeria, England) are astute, the book felt overlong. I found Ifemelu's character wearying. Obinze was a more empathetic character-- solid and thoughtful and not so contrary and self-destructive. 

There was general agreement regarding the fine quality of writing and the length of the book by other book group members and it generated a lively discussion. One of the members noted that it was also a book about the difficulties of "going home" once one has emigrated. I was surprised how much discussion there was about hair! Some of my favorite (evocative, lyrical, pointed) quotes from the book follow:
Describing her malaise just before she decides to return to Nigeria, Ifemelu says, "It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, a bleakness and borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness." Of her relationship at the same time she said it "was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out."
Obinze was given some notable quotes, too. He said of his wife, Kosi, "There was something immodest about her modestly: it announced itself." And of another friend complimenting him on how humble he was, Obinze thought "humility had always seemed to him a specious thing, invented for the comfort of others: you were priased for humility by people because you did not make them feel any more lacking than they already did. It was honesty that he valued..."
One of Ifemelu's comments about race was this: "The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it's a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America."
And this lovely observation about writing to Ifemelu from Obinze: "He began to write to her about his time in England, hoping she would reply and then later looking forward to the writing itself...Writing her also became a way of writing himself."
The book has received widespread praise. I would agree with The Guardian that this is a book that changes the way you look at the world and with their assertion that "Adichie is particularly good at exposing the contradictory ebb and flow of America's painful attempts to reconcile itself with its recent past, when segregation still persisted in the south." There are many more reviews, e.g., from NPR, Kirkus, The Telegraph, The Boston Globe,  The Independent.