Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend-the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore.

When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. Nigeria, the vibrancy of its heart, the soul of its people, is captured in these stories.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. In 'Tumours and Butterflies,' Uchenna, disowned by her abusive father as she leaves for university, reluctantly comes home to assist her mother. A daughter narrates 'Shelter,' following along as her Nigerian mother meets rejection at a Boston domestic abuse shelter because of visa issues. Later stories plumb the Nigerian-American immigrant experience. In 'America,' a Port Harcourt teacher discovers her sexuality and then decides to follow her love to America. The haunting 'Fairness' speaks of color and class, with a young girl, her mother entranced by Glamour and Elle, feeling 'something like envy in me.' Most affecting is 'Runs Girl.' A college student, a religious girl, meets a Yahoo Boy, one of the 'ones who rolled into town in sleek cars and with pockets full of cash.' Many of Okparanta’s stories unfold amongst the Niger Delta’s guava and plantain trees, where big oil employs and pollutes, amid flat-screens and BMWs and NEPA power failures leaving candles to hold back the night.

'Wahala!' follows: Ezinne seeks help from a dibia, a folk healer, for her inability to conceive, her pain invisible to her husband and misunderstood by her mother. The book opens with 'On Ohaeto Street.' A mysterious narrator tells of young Chinwe marrying Eze but finds he treasures possessions more than a wife. One of Granta’s New Voices honorees, Okparanta debuts with ten pieces focusing on her native Nigeria.

Happiness like water