Poured Over: Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ on A Spell of Good Things

By Miwa Messer / February 23, 2023 at 6:00 am

“I’m one of those writers that … I think I know the story I want to write when I’m going in with a novel … but by the time I get into the middle of it, it’s like I’ve discovered a totally different story.”

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s A Spell of Good Things explores class, love, and family ties with interwoven narratives of struggle, heartbreak and hope in Nigeria. She joins us to talk about her cast of unforgettable characters, how misogyny permeates life and literature, what surprised her while writing this novel, her literary influences and more with Poured Over host, Miwa Messer. Listen after the episode for a TBR Topoff from Marc and Jamie. 

Featured Books (Episode)
A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ
Stay with Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ
Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Featured Books (TBR Topoff)
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays with occasional Saturdays here and on your favorite podcast app.    

Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ has written an amazing, amazing, amazing book. It’s called A Spell of Good Things. It’s her second novel, it’s a follow up to the critically acclaimed Stay with Me from 2017, which I think a lot of us remember because it made so much good noise. It was so excellent, that book, but A Spell of Good Things is just out. I know, we want to stay away from spoilers. But can I ask you to set up the story for listeners, and then we can go galivanting off with all the stuff we want to talk about.

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ

Thank you so much. Miwa, thank you for having me. So Spell of Good Things begins with a young boy named Eniola. And he is in secondary school, he’s sort of preparing to write exams that will take him to the university. He wants to go to the university, but his family is so impoverished at this point in time, that he’s going to a school but he’s having a lot of trouble in school because his parents can’t pay his fees and he doesn’t have the textbooks he needs. And then on the other side of town, is Wuraola who is a young doctor, she’s the perfect daughter of Nigerian parents, she studied medicine, she got all the good grades. She’s not engaged yet at the beginning of the book, but at some point in the book, she becomes engaged and becomes an even more perfect daughter than she was before. So it’s the story of both their families really recycled through different members of the family. But these two people are the characters, their lives sort of intersect in all kinds of consequential wins.

This novel broke my heart so many times for all of the good reasons and all of the right reasons. And I have to say, I’m going to start with Eniola for a second because his dad gets fired as a teacher. His dad is a history teacher in secondary school. And the current government says, oh, no, no, we don’t need the humanities, we only need science and technology. We don’t need art teachers. We don’t need music teachers. We don’t need history teachers, we don’t need the humanities, we only need the things that will push us forward. And this is what starts the family’s downward trajectory, and dad can’t find another job, and they can’t pay school fees. And school just represents so much, not just to Eniola but also to his parents, his little sister. I love his little sister, I love Bisola. She is a great character. There are very excellent little sisters in this novel. I will say the little sisters are rock stars. Yeah, they’re awesome. But I do want to talk about what school represents. I mean, the teachers are not necessarily nice. There are a couple of things that did shock me a little bit. I wasn’t expecting children to be hit because their school fees weren’t paid. And I’m going to start with kind of a big question. But are we looking at the legacy of colonialism in Nigeria with just that piece of it?

That’s a good question. And I’m not sure that I can accurately answer it. The boarding school system, which is not reflected here is definitely part of the legacy of colonialism and many of the practices in terms of corporal punishment. I think it’s also a practice that is unfortunately, quite common outside of the historical experience. And school is such a huge part of Eniola’s life, because for him and for his family, it is a way out, but outside of what it represents, for him, it’s also a tool in the hands of the people that wield power in this community, and they recognize that. And what kind of education is provided, you talked about the sack of the history teachers and that was something that actually happened. And I wanted to think through that, consider how that was impactful and the kinds of consequences that I think it even has now on Nigeria.

You know, the flip side of Eniola’s experience is Wuraola. I mean, she’s a medical student and the world is in front of her. She can do whatever she’d like, but her struggle is slightly different. And I don’t think it’s necessarily unfamiliar to an American audience. I mean, here she is, her parents are pushing her to get married because she’s staring at 30. They’re not focused on the fact that they’ve got this really smart daughter who’s about to be a doctor, which is very complicated. And they’re kind of like well, have you gotten married yet? And then she brings home a boy that they think is very, very acceptable. And I have many, many notes on her boyfriend, none of which can be repeated on the show. Because he thinks he’s a stand-up guy and his parents think he’s a stand-up guy and Wuraola’s parents think he’s a stand-up guy, she keeps trying to tell herself that he’s a stand-up guy, because I think she just feels this very intense pressure to be married, and to settle down and do what this dude wants. And he’s just, he’s who he is. But this guy is the worst. So, here’s the thing. Can we talk about these two characters? Did you start with the characters? Did you start with the story? I mean, there’s some thematic consistency with Stay with Me. But this is a much bigger book. And it’s third person, and it’s they’re way more characters and way more moving parts. But where did this start?

For me, Eniola was at the heart of the novel right from the beginning. I’d had this experience where I had seen a neighborhood that I was so shocked by, even though I’d lived in the city for several years, since I think I was we moved there when I was eight and I’ve never been in a neighborhood as impoverished as that. And I think the idea, I was just stunned by how blind I was, and how little that I knew of a city that I felt that, you know, in 2012, or 2013, that I felt- this is my city. But I knew so little about it. And that was at the back of my mind. And a few months later, I started thinking about this boy, Eniola and that’s when I knew that I had. First of all, I thought it was a short story. So it was first of all a short story and it was when I got to the end of the short story, that I realized it was the first chapter of a book because it then ended with this interaction between Eniola and Motara, who’s the little sister from the other family. So then I began with the two of them as the anchor characters, and that they were the anchor characters for the first draft. And then I came back to the beginning and realized that the anchor character for the other family was a different person.

Oh, that’s so interesting, because I know I mentioned this at the top of the show, but the little sisters, are free in a way that Eniola and Wuraola are not. And you know, it’s partially that oldest child thing, and it’s partially believing what your parents tell you. And then the little sisters, are just like none of you know what’s going on, not one of you has a clue. I just want to go to school. To see these sort of, minefields that are laid out‚— school should be the way that you find a new life and make something of whatever’s coming next, and marriage for most people should be a very happy occasion. They should both represent your future and instead, they both seem very, sadly complicated in and coded a little bit in desperation. I mean, I go back and forth on whether or not Wuraola really wants to be married. I’m not sold on the idea that she actually wants to be married. She’s just kind of like, yeah, I need to do this and the party is fine. And yay, but I really want to make my parents happy. She’s just not, this might not be her path.

I don’t think she wants to; I think she’s that daughter that’s done all the right things. So, the point where she almost doesn’t know who she is, she has a difficult time separating what she wants, from what is expected about her. And I think that’s the same thing with the marriage question. There’s such a fusion for her between what is expected of her and what she then does that it takes her a while to figure out maybe this is not for me right now,

I suppose too, growing up with a mom like Yeye, I love mom, I really do. There are some moments where I was very glad Yeye was not my mom. One of the set pieces in this book, we’re at Yeye’s 50th birthday party and this is a really big deal. This is a really, really big deal. Her dad had died when she was younger, there was a very good chance that she and her sisters were going to have a very bad life because of that, because of the cultural structure of her class and her community. And we learned so much about her in the span leading up to this party and her sisters and how her sister saved the other sisters, because she married well. And we’re not talking about the 1940s. Like this is all very kind of current, and I don’t see how Wuraola wouldn’t know that, like the obligation comes first. And she’s clearly a little bit of a daddy’s girl too. I mean, she really loves her dad. And it’s very sweet to see. But she’s not marrying her dad, that’s for sure. You know, she’s just not. And I feel for the women, though, because the misogyny is pretty intense. And again, this is a novel that set in the present day. Like, we’re not going back into this is not you have not decided to write about Lagos in 1920 or 1930. This is like right now. And it feels like it cuts across all classes. Like it’s just a piece of the country’s culture. And I’m just wondering how that, I mean, you live there now, what’s that like for you, when you’re not putting it into your art?

I think that the misogyny is so woven into everyday life, that I think sometimes it becomes invisible. And that’s one of the things I wanted to do with this book, to look at how the way that it sort of normalized, it seeps into your consciousness, you know, over time, you keep getting all these messages about what matters and what should matter and what your life should ultimately be about. I feel like sometimes people don’t see it anymore. In certain instances, suffering like when Motara begins to talk to her about getting married, there was a time when I said you know, I’m going to, you should make somebody do this in fiction. So what had happened was, this was right off the back of publishing Stay with Me, and I’d done an event in Lagos and after the event, a gentleman comes to me and says, you know, “I’m very happy to hear about everything you’re doing.” I don’t know this guy. And then it’s like, “Oh, are you married?” And I’m like, “No, I’m not.” And then he was like, “Oh, well, you should get married, because all these things are not as important.” And I’m just looking at him, I’m not sure I laughed in his face, but in my head, I was just laughing. You see, and then I walked away. And I think for the rest of the week, I was sort of thinking, why would somebody think they could walk up to me randomly and say that. That it’s acceptable to say these things that they probably think they’re well intentioned? I don’t know. So that’s one of the things I wanted to do, that I wanted to look at not just the big manifestations, you know, of misogyny, but that everyday aggressions, you know, not so micro really. Though many, many women grow with. I mean, for instance, Yeye, part of her origin story is that her own mother did not have a son, and her father had a son outside of the marriage, and therefore, the son was the inheritor. and there’s whole other things that are formed someone like he, and she might not even have the language or speaking that language, but some of it has shaped who she is and how she interacts with her world, how she positions itself, even in her marriage. I’m gonna make sure that I’m gonna be taken care of if anything was right here. That was very important for me. I mean, as a young girl growing up in Nigeria, it was something that at a certain point, I think, I came up against because I think I was fortunate enough that it wasn’t a thing in my family really. So I feel like it was more shocking to me.

I mean, I’m always surprised when women internalize misogyny, and I shouldn’t be, I just I shouldn’t be. I’m always really disappointed, to be honest, that there are women who buy into the storyline that somehow we are not meant to be in a space that we’re in. You know, everyone’s going to do what they’re going to do. People are people, I absolutely understand that but Yeye, especially, I mean, I really like her as a character. She loves her children. She’s just a little ill equipped, especially with Motara, who is her own person, and yet there are people who are just like— no, she’s spoiled, she’s spoiled. And I’m like, and at first when we meet her, you kind of nod your head and go yeah, she’s a little spoiled and then you realize she’s not spoiled, she just sees the truth. And part of what you’re doing in A Spell of Good Things is breaking through this idea of what’s truth, what’s reality, what do consequences mean? I mean, there are some characters who function without any consequence to their decisions. And then there are others who are not as lucky. I mean, you are playing with really big ideas. And yet, some of it is about who eats when, and how they get fed, or how their school feeds them or how their environment shapes them. At one point, Eniola is learning how to be a tailor, but his parents can’t even pay the apprentice fees. So, he might not get to be a tailor, like, this kid is just out of options, completely and not any of it is by his choice. Not one thing is by his choice, and Wuraola has kind of the same thing, only from a different angle, neither of them really has a choice. So, for you as the writer, how do you give yourself space to breathe in a story like that? I mean, there are moments where the story gets very, very intense, there are moments where and it needs to, and it’s exactly where things need to go. But for you living in this 24/7…

I mean, I think for me, honestly, it took a while to write. So I was taking chunks of time away from it, you know, and there were times when I just needed a break from it, really, I would just take a break. And the other thing was really that I found two characters, or more than two that I really enjoyed, and who for me, had that freedom. And it’s the little sisters, you know, I really loved writing the chapters and the way they move in the world, they are at a stage in their lives where their spirits haven’t been broken the way that many people around them have had their spirits broken, and it was just such a delight. And sometimes I would jump forward and make notes about that. Just because I wanted to get there. It was also fun to throw the party, with all the sisters.

The sisters are excellent. Yeye’s sisters are excellent. So I luckily got to go to a Nigerian wedding in the States once. Between the food and the dresses and the dancing and the everything else. Y’all know how to throw a party. It was so much fun. It was ridiculous. And I don’t really dance in public. It’s just I can’t— Oh, no, I danced. It was ridiculous. It was so great. But a friend of mines’ little brother married a Nigerian woman. And I was just like, yeah, I totally got this, I absolutely can see this party. I can see the food and just all of it. I can imagine that was a lot of fun.

That was fun to write.

That’s so great. Did anything surprise you while you were writing? I mean, I know you said when you were writing the little sisters, you would sometimes jump around. But there’s so much that happens. And there’s so many moments where the collision of characters or circumstance is so great. It’s so great.

So, there were many things that surprised me as I was writing it. And I initially thought there would be two characters really at the center of everything. And then it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I’m one of those writers that I don’t know, I think it happens to many people, I think I know the story I want to write when I’m going in with a novel. But I mean, I’ve done it two times now. So I think it’s probably going to be the same going forward. But by the time I get into the middle of it, it’s like, I’ve discovered a totally different story. You know, it began as the story of two teenagers living in the city. And then it became the story of the city, the story of two families. Yeah, I was surprised by that meant that it took longer to finish than I thought.

Can we talk about your literary influences for a second? You’ve studied with Chimamanda Adichie, you’ve studied with Margaret Atwood, but who are some of the writers who helped make you the writer you are now.

I mean, I think for this book in particular, there’s Sefi Atta Everything Good Will Come was a very important book for me. I remember the first time I saw it in a supermarket, and I remember reading it and just not stopping. And it’s a book that I’ve come back to quite a number of times because I think it has so much to say about Nigeria, about being a woman in Nigeria, about the Nigerian state that’s still so relevant even now. So that’s one writer and one book that I absolutely love. I mean, I’ve been reading quite a bit of Elizabeth Strout recently, and I’ve been having a great time.

Lucy by the Sea, Lucy by the Sea.

I haven’t gotten to that yet.

Okay. You have a treat coming. You have a treat. I had a little bit of a crush on William in Oh, William, and I’m just like, I have a little bit of a crush on a fictional character who is old enough to be my dad. This is a little weird, but okay. I will follow her anywhere. I will follow her anywhere. The language is beautiful. The characters are amazing. She’s constantly surprising me. She’s so good.

I have a friend who absolutely loves her work and we both read and just text each other like, I finished this one! You know, that’s one person whose work is just, I think it’s nourishing me. Jhumpa Lahiri, I really love her work. I read her short story collection I think when I was working in a bank here. That was the first time I read her work. And it was just like oh yeah, this is why I want to write, I need to get out of this bank.

Jhumpa does that moment where before tips into after, and it’s like two sentences and it’s this hinge moment. It’s the thing obviously, that every writer aims for, right? Like, the whole point is to show that something has changed, right? And she just does it and you kind of have to sit there for a minute. You just have to sit there with whatever, because it’s at most two sentences. Maybe three, usually she does it in a single sentence and you’re like, oh, there is no going back. I just remember reading Interpreter of Maladies when it first came out and thinking, this is what a story collection is supposed to be. I do love stories. I really love short stories.

I love the story collection.

She’s really the bomb.

And then I love What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky. I just love that. It was it was incredible. Lesley Nneka Arimah and then ZZ Packer’s Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.

I love the fact too, that you have this sort of wide perspective of writers that you’re drawing from. I know I said this to you before we started taping. But yes, I’m in Nigeria, in your world, as I’m reading this book, and yet, I feel like I’m seeing America reflected back to me right now present-day America reflected demand. And the idea that I went to Nigeria, to find my own country. It’s just I mean, that’s why we read right? Like, it’s just that that connection to another world and to characters that I would not meet outside of your work. And I just I really, I didn’t want to put the book down at all while I was reading, but there were moments where I really kind of had to take a deep breath and step back a little bit because this is life. There are complications and we don’t always get to do what we want to do. But also, sometimes you don’t get to make choices because you don’t have any. I mean, your characters. Do you miss them?

Yeah, I think I do. Yeah, I do. I do. I’m trying to get into the next one, so that I have new friends. I think I missed some of the characters.

I don’t want to add, it’s not so much that there’s another book in this book, because I feel like this world is exactly what it needs to be, and it ended exactly the way I expected. And that’s really all I’m gonna say, I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. But at the same time, it seems like there’s so much like Auntie Keroh and the women, I really connected with the women in a way that didn’t surprise me. But like Auntie Keroh was great. And I know I’ve talked about Wuraola’s mom, but even Eniola’s mom like she makes some bad calls. She really does. I mean, she has her children begging on the street and pretending to be blind and she’s pretending to be blind, and Eniola is pretending to be deaf and mute but she loves her family, she wants the best for her children. She has to make really hard choices that I would hope no one would ever have to make. She’s not going to have an easy path. Like she’s just not. And at one point, even one of her brothers is like, you should divorce your husband. She’s like, why would I do that? Why would I do that? Why are you treating this like it’s a disposable thing? Like, yes, he lost his job, but it’s out of his hands and now you’re telling me I can’t come home unless I get divorced? It just feels like the pressure is on everyone. And the men are a little clueless. Not Eniola, he feels everything. He feels everything and he sees everything. But there are other men where I’m just like, Oh, you’re just bopping through life?

Yeah, I can think of a particular man who’s done that. And I really do like him. I think he’s a nice guy, but he’s had such a good life and he think anything could go wrong. He’s not right about that. And I think I mean, with Eniola’s father, for instance, I wanted to think about what it’s like to have someone in the family who’s having a mental health crisis, and what that means for him and what that means for those who love him, and who are trying to love him through this difficult time. You know, and what it means when people that give him as much grace as they would, you know, if he had a physical sickness. If he had something that was physically wrong with him, wrong with his body, he would have received more grace, but he’s having trouble with his mind and many people were just like, he should just get off the bed.

And it’s not that simple. It’s not that simple. I mean, Eniola’s journey is really, it’s powerful. It’s certainly not what his parents wanted, or what he would have thought, but there’s a certain inevitability to it. Because he’s out of options. He’s out of options. And the idea that he’s still like— you have this great line about him where you say, you know, when he was little, he would close his eyes when something went wrong, because he thought, well, if he couldn’t see anyone, no one could see him. And that’s such a sweet little kid thing to think. By the end of the book, he’s still that kid in some ways, yet it doesn’t serve him well. I’m really hoping he’s okay. I’m talking about a fictional character, like he’s a real person, but I’m hoping he’s okay. I’m hoping Wuraola is okay. I think ultimately, they’re going to be, but I love ending a book and, and thinking about the world and the people after I’m done. And, you know, it doesn’t happen with every book, it just doesn’t. You don’t necessarily get haunted with every book let’s, not pretend that every book hits you the same. I had a similar response actually to Sing, Unburied, Sing the Jesmyn Ward from a few years ago. I just wondering about Jojo. And I’m like, is that kid okay? It happens, comes with the job. I’m a bookseller.

I think even for me, as a writer, I sometimes, this is really weird, sometimes I think of all my characters. I think, when I’m writing they become real people. When I was a kid, I think my grandmother was bothered at one point because I used to talk to myself.

So you were going to be a writer, basically, there was no going back, there was no choice. You were already doing a tiny person.

Because I used to talk to myself, I would have all these conversations with all these people I’d made up. Sometimes, many times, particularly with a book, I just show like these people are living their lives. They’re somewhere, and their lives are continuing, I’m just not with them anymore. It’s weird, but it’s how I feel.

It also tells me that whoever wrote that particular book did their job, right that we’re so absorbed in the story and so caught up. The thing is too, the pacing in A Spell of Good Things is really spectacular too. The storey is always moving forward, and not in a way that made me feel rushed and not in a way that made me think. I mean, yes, there were a couple of moments where I needed to stop because some thing happens, and I needed to process the thing that happened. But I never felt like I was taken out of the world ever. And occasionally, you know, it happens. You read a lot, you know, there are times where you’re just like, oh, what just happened? No, I always needed to know what was happening next. And there were times where I hoped for something to happen and maybe something different happened. I was doing a full body read on A Spell of Good Things. I was in it.

I’m glad to hear.

But for you, and I know I keep coming back to this. But like for you as the writer, this is a really intense experience. Are you hopeful, though? Do you believe we can actually change; can people evolve? I mean,

I am, I am. I think I’m a hopeful person actually. When I finished Stay with Me, I said to myself, I’m never writing a sad book again. I will not do this.

Hi. I mean, it’s sad in the right way. Sad in the right way. Sad in the I have a heart, it is beating. I love these people, even the ones that are well, I you know who I don’t love.

I think that when I write characters, when I write a book, I have to care about the characters to really become invested in the story or I wouldn’t finish it.

I just I got so attached, I got so, so attached to the people I got attached to, and then, you know, the one I want to punt into the sun, I really want to punt that guy into the sun, he was going to always be that person. And readers will find out how he ended up like, he is just, he’s that guy. And he has no choice either, but I still want to punt him into the sun. Really. And it’s so wonderful to be able to talk about this very intense, big, political novel. I mean, you’re talking about trust, and desperation, and love and hate all of the things that drive literature and art, and you and I can at least laugh about it because the humanity is always there. Like, as long as you can see the humanity. It’s just it’s one of those reading experiences where you get to feel everything you get to feel have read that thing. Yeah, reading is a really cool thing. And I’m so grateful you wrote this. I am so grateful that you wrote A Spell Good Things. Thank you.

Thank you.