The Thing Around Your Neck

Told in a well-balanced tone that holds within it terrible violence, stunning loss, and bitter disappointment, Nigerian-born Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck shuttles from Nigeria to America and back, finding only rare glimpses of understanding or justice in either place. In the best of these densely packed stories Adichie's command never slips while she interweaves both personal and political events through her characters' lives. Two women, one Christian and one Muslim, take shelter together during a riot and form a tenuous bond they might never have come to otherwise. A woman's anger and grief over the politically motivated murder of her husband and child render her powerless to secure a visa for herself to escape a dire fate. Adichie is unsparing in depicting the plight of her mostly female characters yet she is never cruel, leaving them with their dignity intact—if, sometimes, little else. Other stories here, particularly those told in second person, feel weak in comparison and come to endings that, though carefully rendered, somehow don't satisfy. But even these are sustained by Adichie's wisely observant prose. Harsh but honest, The Thing Around Your Neck boldly explores the connections and disconnections between Africa and America, and the lives of people who can't find a home in either place.