December 1, 2022
In Nigerian British author Agbaje-Williams's auction-hot The Three of Us, a heretofore contented wife discovers the acrimony between her husband and best friend as they dance around her for first place in her attention (75,000-copy first printing). Inaugural winner of the Chautauqua Janus Prize, Cuffy structures Dances according to the basics of ballet as her Black heroine rises to become a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet while struggling with personal issues. From a staff writer at New York magazine's "The Strategist," Denton-Hurst's Homebodies features a young Black woman fired from her media job who writes a scorching denunciation of the racism and sexism she encountered in the business that goes viral (75,000-copy first printing). In Pushcart Prize-nominated Neal's Notes on Her Color a young Black Indigenous woman gifted with the ability to change the color of her skin finds self-respect (and a means of escaping crushing family expectations) with a queer, dark-skinned piano instructor. In What Napoleon Could Not Do, from Ghanian-born Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Nnuro, Ghanian computer programmer Jacob can't win permission from the U.S. government to move to Virginia to be with his wife while Jacob's sister Belinda is married to a wealthy Black Texan who tries to apprise Jacob of the country's deep-seated racism (50,000-copy first printing). Drawn from her family's experience, Pushcart Prize-winning Oza's A History of Burning opens with Pirbhai's being taken from India to work on the East African Railway for the British and moves toward the expulsion of his descendants from Uganda in 1972 (50,000-copy first printing)
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March 6, 2023
In Agbaje-Williams’s intoxicating debut, a Nigerian housewife’s protective husband and freewheeling best friend vie for her loyalty and affection over the course of a single day. The unnamed wife grapples with the prospect of pregnancy, which she sees as a “ritual performed out of responsibility rather than desire.” Her dilemma is complicated by a visit from her childhood best friend, Temi. Back in college, the self-seeking and brash Temi coaxed her friend out of her shell of reticence and fear, but in the meantime her conservative husband, also unnamed, has led her into a traditional gender role. Temi fears her friend is regressing into a “woman who is silent and subservient,” and the husband, of course, has grown tired of Temi’s presence and wants to start a family. The narrative unfolds as a triptych, each character helming a section from their point of view to wondrous and wearying effects as they retell and relitigate the same events. There’s not much of a plot, though it’s delicious to watch the characters’ long-fermenting tensions come to the fore. It lands as a discerning debut from an author who knows a thing or two (or three) about the ever-shifting dynamics of intimacy.
April 15, 2023
In Agbaje-Williams' wonderfully witty debut novel, the precarious d�tente between a wife, her husband, and her best friend blows up over the course of one fateful, wine-fueled day. The wealthy British Nigerian couple are trying for a baby, and both profess to want a ""fuss-free" traditional married life--although not, perhaps, on precisely the same terms. And then there is Temi (the only one of the three who is named)--loud, brash, contemptuous of men, pursuing life strictly on her own terms, "by myself, for myself." Temi and the husband loathe one another, each sure they know the woman the wife really is (or should be). Provocations escalate, devastating secrets spill out, and the wife, who thought she was in control, is surprised to find herself "a woman in between two selves undecided as to which she can remain loyal." This wry comedy of manners unfolds in a trio of engagingly self-absorbed, revealingly unreliable first-person narratives. Agbaje-Williams sharply renders each character's unique voice, building depth and tension as the story is told and retold.
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April 13, 2023
DEBUT Three wealthy British Nigerians are locked in an epic relationship battle during one afternoon. Fueled by endless bottles of wine, they each tell their point of view in rich, raw, often hilarious detail. The narrator is the young, pampered wife of a workaholic husband and lifelong besties with Temi, the only character in the novel with a name. Temi freed her from her controlling parents by convincing them to send her to college. The friends had a wild run of it until the narrator married. The narrator now finds herself controlled by her adoring husband, and Temi has been an ever-present, no-boundaries, often uninvited visitor during their entire marriage. She is determined to free her friend from the united pressures of her husband and a mother-in-law demanding grandchildren, and her frequent brazen intrusion into the couple's lives has pushed the husband to distraction. On this day, he comes home early from work and as the three continue to drink, the hostilities escalate into a startling point of no return. VERDICT Debut novelist Agbaje-Williams brilliantly captures the toxic dynamics of an emotional train wreck that inevitably comes from the imbalance of a fragile marriage threatened by the presence of a conniving third party.--Beth E. Andersen
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Starred review from March 15, 2023
When a well-to-do British Nigerian couple and the wife's best friend drink way too much wine and whiskey, the fraught triangle of their relationship falls apart. Agbaje-Williams' striking, often wickedly funny debut is set over the course of one day, divided into three sections. The first is narrated by a married woman whose lifelong best friend, Temi, arrives at her house at noon with wine, chips, and cigarettes. The two hang out and deconstruct Temi's recent dates; we learn that the wife and her husband have begun trying to get pregnant and that Temi sees this as a betrayal. Temi and the husband hate each other and always have. As the day progresses into evening, the second section of the book is told by the husband, the third by Temi. Agbaje-Williams brilliantly captures the inner monologue as well as the conversational style of each of the three, through which their whole cultural milieu takes shape around them, from the expectations of their Nigerian parents to their Smeg fridge and Tesco wine. The husband's section is the funniest as he rages in his head against his wife's friendship with Temi and recalls the history of insults he has endured. But whenever he complains about anything, like the fact that Temi has broken into a special bottle of wine he was saving, his wife says "Kim, there's people that are dying," a Kardashian reference that he internalizes. "The thought that my wife's friend was now privy even to our private text messages repulsed and enraged me. I quoted the Kardashians three times like a prayer then resolved to move past the situation for my own sanity and to avoid prison." The last section is narrated by Temi, whose extreme ideas about men, women, and marriage allow her to rationalize her destructive behavior. As she and the husband move from passive-aggressive sniping to acts of war, as the empty bottles pile up in the recycling, she hatches an evil plan. With three unlikable, unreliable narrators, and with both patriarchal arrangements and feminist alternatives depicted as self-serving transactions, Agbaje-Williams throws caution to the wind and pulls off a surprise win. An original and potent comedy of manners with an ingenious final twist.
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