Dele Weds Destiny: A stunning novel of friendship, love and home - the most heart-warming debut of 2022

£9.9
FREE Shipping

Dele Weds Destiny: A stunning novel of friendship, love and home - the most heart-warming debut of 2022

Dele Weds Destiny: A stunning novel of friendship, love and home - the most heart-warming debut of 2022

RRP: £99
Price: £9.9
£9.9 FREE Shipping

In stock

We accept the following payment methods

Description

Their friendship is complicated but enduring, and over the course of the novel, the reader learns about their loves and losses. How Funmi stole Zainab's boyfriend and became pregnant, only to have an abortion and lose the boyfriend to police violence. How Enitan was seduced by an American Peace Corps volunteer, the only one who ever really saw her, but is culturally so different from him --- a Connecticut WASP --- that raising their daughter together put them at odds. How Zainab fell in love with her teacher, a friend of her father’s, and ruptured her relationship with her father to have him. Dami was Tomi’s first reader, but didn’t help shape Dele Weds Destiny—other than confirming it was worth reading. “We’re very honest with each other,” Tomi says. She shelved her first attempt at a novel—keeping only the title, Dele Weds Destiny—after Dami’s less-than-enthusiastic response. Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love.

The intricacies of female friendships and the complex nature of mother/daughter relationships are at the heart of this absorbing novel from BuzzFeed culture editor Obaro, a sharp new voice on the literary scene * Library Journal * Enitan, the brainiest of the three friends, escaped her oppressive Christian mother by marrying Charles, an American Peace Corps volunteer. He came from a white New England family and, with an exoticized image of Africa that he absorbed from reading Ernest Hemingway, taught at the women’s university, where he met and seduced Enitan. Enitan and Charles moved to New York, their marriage failed, and she raised their daughter, Remi, alone. Enitan brings now-19-year-old Remi to Nigeria for the lavish wedding. Destiny’s wedding brings the trio together for the first time in many years. Now, they are middle-aged with families of their own, with a lot more support, but they are lonely as they navigate this new stage of their lives alone. Enitan, who is the peacekeeper of this friendship group, is recently separated, and she’s living alone for the first time in Queens, New York. She flies to Nigeria with her teenage daughter. Here, the novel expands to explore not only female friendship but the complex relationships between mothers and daughters. Fast-paced, glamorous, and bursting with emotion, Dele Weds Destiny is a thrilling debut. The bonds between women - as friends, and across the generations - are the jewels that make this story shine!' - Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage Obaro began writing Dele Weds Destiny in the summer of 2019, after her twin sister, Dami Obaro, AB’12, moved out of their shared New York apartment, leaving behind her desk. “There’s something about actually having a desk,” Obaro says. “It just made it easier.”The story of three once-inseparable college friends in Nigeria who reunite in Lagos for the first time in 30 years --- a sparkling debut novel about mothers and daughters, culture and class, sex and love, and the extraordinary resilience of female friendship. A story of three women, over three decades, we witness the shared histories, betrayals and triumphs play out, and their unforgettable, enduring friendship. By day, Obaro is a staff editor for "Buzzfeed Reader", having edited cultural criticism, essays and creative writing for the likes of Bim Adewunmi and Tommy Orange. By her design, we see flashes of music, literature and art weaved into the narrative, from Yemi Alade and Brenda and the Big Dudes to romance writer Balaraba Ramat Yakubu and photographer J D ‘Okhai Ojeikere. Figuring out what they would be hearing and seeing sent her on a road of “rediscovery” but she was wary of going too heavy on research. The risk of feeling “like [she] was working on a news story” was understandably high. There’s some modest tension of the “will-she-or-won’t-she” kind over Destiny’s indifference to her forthcoming nuptials. But we’re denied the more interesting question of whether the friendship between the three women can survive because right at the beginning we’re assured that they will remain “steadfastly in each other’s lives.” Without that element of drama, I couldn’t see there was much of a purpose to the story. The idea for the book was sound, it was the execution that let it down for me. Dele Weds Destiny by Tomi Obaro: Footnotes

The first 40% of the narrative introduces us to former college friends Funmi, Enitan, and Zainab, who are now in their middle-age, as they reunite in Lagos to celebrate Funmi’s daughter’s wedding. As we follow Enitan and Zainab making their way to Funmi’s house, we are given an understanding of their current circumstances: Enitan, who is based in New York, and her husband Chalres, a white American, are getting divorced and their teenage daughter, Remi, now resents her, but not their father; Zainab’s has become a carer to her older husband Ahmed, after he suffered two strokes. Funmi seems to enjoy a lavish lifestyle and is not interested in asking her husband about his ‘shady’ business. Her daughter, Destiny, is by all appearances a devoted daughter, who is respectful of her elders and fulfilling the life her parents want her to. But Funmi wishes that she could have a more meaningful relationship with her, as Destiny seems to hold her at a distance. Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for making this book available to me via NetGalley in return for an honest review. Did editing in the non-fiction world offer any cheat codes to the fiction process? She’s not so sure. “I don’t really understand how editing fiction works. It’s kind of amazing to me because in non-fiction there are generally guidelines that you’re going off of, and then in fiction it can feel like it could be anything.” It at least made her less precious. “If my editor was like, ‘This isn’t working’, I was like, ‘OK’. It wasn’t like every word was a gem.” Dele Weds Destiny is, among a great many other things, such a generous and patient consideration of life, and of lives. Tomi Obaro is such a skilled writer, with an eye towards the vivid and vivacious moments that others might dismiss as stillness. I am so thankful for the world of this book, and so excited for everyone who gets to sit in it.”— Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us Reserved Zainab, beautiful and brash Funmi and homely Enitan were inseparable while at university in northern Nigeria. Then their lives diverged. Two remained in Nigeria where one married a wealthy businessman and the other married an academic whose failing health has left them struggling to make ends meet. The third moved to New York, eloped with the son of a family proud of their ancestral link with the Mayflower, and felt her identity slowly ebb away.Funmi, Enitan, and Zainab first meet at university in Nigeria and become friends for life despite their differences. Funmi is beautiful, brash, and determined; Enitan is homely and eager, seeking escape from her single mother’s smothering and needylove; Zainab is elegant and reserved, raised by her father’s first two wives after her mother’s death in childbirth. Over the course of thirty years, their lives and friendships diverge and change. Enitan is separating from her husband, trying to understand her daughter Remi. Zainab finds herself the sole breadwinner for her husband and their four sons. And Funmi is living a life of confined luxury, as the wife of a successful, shady businessman.

A story rendered with so much heart.” —Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn HugoObaro writes beautifully about the complicated labour of friendship and parentage. Dele Weds Destiny explores caregiving as a kind of deferment, but also as discovery, of desire, of fury, of home' Raven Leilani Obaro writes beautifully about the complicated labor of friendship and parentage. Dele Weds Destiny explores caregiving as a kind of deferment, but also as discovery, of desire, of fury, of home -- Raven Leilani, author of Luster This book takes a long time to get going and there’s a heavy reliance on “telling” us about the differing characters and experiences of the three women. Funmi, has everything that money and status can buy but her life has no meaning. Enitan, the most intelligent of the trio incurred her family’s wrath by marrying an American Peace Corps volunteer who taught at her university. Now they’re in the process of a divorce. The final member of the trio, Zainab, is the only one who didn’t become a nurse and the only Muslim. As a writer she’s the most bookish of the gang, now acting as carer for her bed-ridden husband. Told from each of the friends POV with timelines in both the present and past, I really enjoyed that we get to read all sides of their friendship. I was drawn into their lives through the secrets, disputes and envy to how they communicated and their bonds of trust. Each character brought a unique dimension to the story. I was particularly drawn to Funmi who was complex yet flawed, she suffered in different ways but had a strength that reflected in various ways throughout her life and shaped the way she mothered. Both Destiny and Remi (Enitan’s daughter) and the men that were in the MC’s lives introduced us to the generational impacts and cultural obligations of womanhood. Here they will reflect on their pasts, the things they loved and lost - but the present brings unexpected surprises too, because their daughters, Remi and Destiny, might just be as rebellious and open-hearted as they once were.

The bonds between women—as friends, and across the generations—are the jewels that make this story shine.”—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage I am also wary of books about mothers and daughters, and that element isn't quite as strong here. The mother/daughter elements are not explored in nearly as much depth, they're more of the plot dressing, really. A generous and patient consideration of life, and of lives . . . I am so thankful for the world of this book and so excited for everyone who gets to sit in it’ Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in AmericaDele Weds Destinyis, among a great many other things, such a generous and patient consideration of life, and of lives. Tomi Obaro is such a skilled writer, with an eye towards the vivid and vivacious moments that others might dismiss as stillness. I am so thankful for the world of this book, and so excited for everyone who gets to sit in it.” –Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

Delivery & Returns

Fruugo

Address: UK
All products: Visit Fruugo Shop