#ReadAroundTheWorld. #Nigeria

The Spider King’s Daughter is a contemporary YA romance and murder mystery, set in Lagos, by Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo. The book won the Betty Trask Award (2013), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Commonwealth Book Prize and longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize and the Etisalat Prize for Literature. Onuzo began this book when she was 17 years old and it was published when she was only 21.

The story was engrossing for at least the first two thirds but gets a bit wobbly towards the end. It begins with the unlikely romance between Abike Johnson, daughter of a wealthy mafia-style businessman, and a street hawker known as Runner G. The story begins with ice-cream and dates and shows vividly the contrast between extremes of poverty and wealth in Nigeria. The focus then shifts onto a murder and revenge, and becomes much more taken up with scheming, corruption and sinister politics.

This was an enjoyable worthwhile read but the ending was clunky, abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying. Abike seemed to have some character development during the story, at least she seemed to take some baby steps away from her spoiled princess image, but seemed to regress again at the end. Runner G began as a likeable and honourable character but seems to make some very bad choices and move in a disappointing direction. I would be interested in reading another of her books. The audionarration by Clifford Samuel and Nneka Okoye was excellent with smooth transitions between the two characters’ points of view. ( )

Abike Johnson, de diecisiete años, es la hija predilecta de su acaudalado padre. Reside en una gran mansiión en Lagos, protegida por guardaespaldas y viaja en un gran jeep negro que la lleva a todas partes. Pero ser la favorita de su padre tiene un precio, y a menudo se siente sola detrás de los altos muros de su hogar.
A un mundo de distancia de la mansión de Abike, en los suburbios de la ciudad, vive un joven vendedor ambulante que se esfuerza por encontrarle sentido al mundo. Su familia lo perdió todo tras la muerte de su padre y ahora él, en las calles, corre detrás de los automóviles vendiendo helados para mantener a su madre y a su hermana.
El día que Abike compra un helado al vendedor ambulante empieza una improbable y frágil historia de amor que desafía los prejuicios de la sociedad nigeriana.

I enjoyed Sankofa and was excited to read the author's debut novel, a Nigerian take on Romeo and Juliet according to the blurb, but was sadly underwhelmed in the end. To start with, I didn't quite get the Shakespeare comparison - Abike is the daughter of a wealthy Nigerian 'businessman', read gangster, and Runner G is a street hawker from a similarly prosperous family fallen on hard times after the death of his father. They meet when he chases after her showy Jeep and she has her driver pretend to break down so she can flirt. Hardly star cross'd lovers. I never really trusted her motives or his gullibility, although the characters were a little flimsy. The author needed to spend longer building their relationship before rushing into the big revelation (that was obvious from the beginning) and confrontation with the truth.

That said, I was fully immersed in the street culture and underworld of Lagos from the first page, with the tacky throwaway wealth of Abike's life and the desperate poverty of Runner G's existence. He works all day chasing after traffic to sell melting ice cream for the equivalent of pennies while she is driven around in air conditioned comfort and pays thousands to throw a party.

From the cruel death of a dog in the first chapter, this is a hard book to read, not least because the narration constantly flips back and forth between Abike and Runner G, presumably to emphasise their different perspectives. On one hand, I wanted the book to be longer and take the time to build more convincing characters, but I was also glad to accept the weak ending and get the hell out of Nigeria! ( )

The protagonist Abike Johnson lives in Nigeria's biggest city Lagos and is the seventeen-year-old daughter of the so-called Spider King from the title. She moves in the upper echelons of Lagosian society and there is nothing lacking in her life. One day, in the car on her way to school, she meets a hawker who is trying to sell ice-cream to the passengers in the cars. Abike decides that she wants to get to know him better and the two meet more often. The hawker could not be more different from Abike, though, as he lives in the slums of Lagos. As Abike and the hawker become closer their backgrounds and their past collide and their romance is over soon. As the hawker learns more about the person he is dating, the story takes an unexpected turn.

The Spider King's Daughter brilliantly portrays the disparities in 21st century Nigeria. They serve as the backdrop of a personal story, one of the kind that Onuzo once described in an interview. According to the author, every story, no matter how small, is worth telling. This one definitely is. 4.5 stars. ( )

Goodness knows how The Spider King’s Daughter landed on my desk. I’ve long had a love for literature from the emerging world, and new authors in that multi-faceted genre are bound to claim my attention. Besides, I’ve been reading some heavy literature (in the widest sense of both words) recently, and I wants something I could leap into, swim through, and emerged happy. The Spider King’s Daughter nailed it.

It’s a gentle story really, despite its chilling undertones. Corruption, sexism, poverty, all are painted with a light brush. The Spider King, Olumide Johnson, was never going to be a fairy princess, and he isn’t. But Onuzo doesn’t dwell on the horror of his psyche, explaining or depicting it. There are a lot of Olumide Johnsons in the world, and we can take him as a given. His daughter Abikẹ is a more congenial figure, his wife perhaps a touch of a caricature, but as almost every black African writer has demonstrated, these people, products of colonialism who have skillfully adopted the opportunism of oppressors when history allowed, these people are there.

So too are the victims of economic injustice. The expulsion, or at best coercion to leave, of European oppressors did not produce a magic want, economic Eden, Nirvana. New oppressors emerged, and as social Darwinism will always prove, only the fittest climb to the top of the heap. The hawker, aka Runner G, is not in Darwinian terms, the fittest. He’s a damned good runner though. That’s how Abikẹ notices him.
Perhaps the remaining characters are not overly developed, but I’m not sure they need to be. All are victims of a society in flux, emerging from colonial yokes, shaking of one era and struggling to find their way in another. It; s not necessary to excavate far beyond that. Some back stories entwine several characters – no spoilers here – and that can be the case in any community.

The Spider King’s Daughter was all I asked of it. The narrative perspectives bounce off one another, the characters are convincing enough, the plat accelerates, the ending surprises. Chibundu Onuzo has written a second novel now (while studying for a Ph.D., no mean effort). Like other reviewers elsewhere I am jealous and awed by her success. If the second novel is half as good as the first (which she published at the age of 21, and began when she was 17) then I will grab it when it passes my desk, and devour it with delight. ( )