The Dream Count publication marks the highly anticipated return to fiction after a decade-long break since the publication of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah. Her two previous bestsellers, Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), will both be held in Nigeria, but the number of dreams is set in the United States against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic.
A social commentary of anguish woven by Adichie's inspiring and reflective prose, Dream Count explores the intertwined lives of four African diaspora women.
The novel, like the characters' lives, is divided into Nigeria and the US. As the wealthy daughter of a “big man” Rich Nigerian businessman, Chiamaka struggles to find her place in the world and meet the expectations of her parents as she aims to become a freelance travel writer. From London to Lisbon, her trips open her mind to the world of experience, but she still can't shake up the feeling that she has found a place where she really belongs.
“I'm an African to write about struggle,” she said, and she asked her to write about Congo and Sudan instead because articles about restaurants were rejected by the editors. Meanwhile, Chiamaka's mother is unable to understand why her daughter is only 44 years old and lives in the United States, rather than returning to Lagos.
“From the outside, America makes more sense,” Chiamaka puzzles. Still in the moment brought by the lockdown, Chiamaka looks back on her recent failed relationships and issues, from her two-timing university lecturer to secretly married British.
Her best friend, Jikora, who appeared previously in a short story published in 2020, struggles to balance the motherhood of her career as a high-flying lawyer with the demands of her family and society's expectations. She shares her experiences with men who she describes as “the thief of time.” Faced with the trauma of her first child, she struggles with the heartbreak caused by the absence of her partner Kwame and begins to question what the future holds for her child.
Omelogor is proud to be single and have no children. She is bold and wealthy, and works as a double financial powerhouse in Nigeria. However, the crisis of faith doubts her her values, and she begins with a journey of self-discovery and sets off to help poor Nigerian women and their women-led business along the way. “That kind of free money? They'll use it. They'll never use it for business,” her colleague says. “You don't know women,” Omrogour responded.
Omelogor is one of the most complicated and detailed characters in the novel. She is a walking contradiction, making it difficult for readers to make up their minds about her. She is rude and rude, an extrovert and a bad temper, and is involved in questionable transactions at her bank. But she decides to fund women's business ventures, make these women's lives a little better, and when she moves to the US (suffers under the same heavy expectations of finding a suitable husband), she writes about her graduate thesis on pornography and how it dehumanizes women.
An anonymous blog, which she started exclusively for men, advises men on how to act with women in their lives (sometimes satirical, sometimes humorous, and sometimes dull), and offers a lighter distraction from the sometimes tragic main plot.
Guinea-born Kadiatou has been seeking asylum in the United States after her husband's death. She is a country that she describes as “my daughter's inheritance… this new peace.” Appreciating the job and the opportunity to seek a better future, Kadiatou's world is upside down when she is sexually assaulted by a prominent businessman and discovers how few women like her are in court. Certainly, isn't this the American ideal she was promised?
Indeed, Kadiatou's traumatic attacks and the racism and classism she experienced at the hands of the American judicial system reflect the real-life accusations of the 2011 Senegal hotel housekeeper Nafisatu Diallo's attempts to rape and sexually assault on former international financial fund chief Dominique Strauss Khan. Almost 15 years could separate Diallo's attack from the attacks Kadiatou experienced in the novel, but as Adichie shows, the results remain the same.
A rich story
“Are you living the life you imagined?” Chiamaka muses with her lover in the afternoon. She certainly isn't, but she doesn't have the main character either. Dream numbers are not stories of happy endings or neat denials. It is a rich tale covered in truth, wit, compassion and sadness. The number of dreams mentioned in the title of the novel is the central motif of the intertwining plot. It includes her husband's dream of Chiamaka, a dream of a better future for Kadiato's daughter, and a fleeting American dream that all four women wanted. However, Ahichi leaves him vague as to the extent that these hopes and dreams are achieved by the purpose of the novel.
Each story of each individual woman in Dream Count is so persuasive that each can easily stand on its own as a novel, and guaranteed a sequel. Omelogor is Brash, Chiamaka is bold, they use their privileged position in education to try to do good things in the world and raise the profiles of women. The voices of Zicola and Cadiatou are quiet in the novel, but they are both as resilient as they try to do the best for their children and try again in a world that opposes them.
At first glance, the lives of these four women may seem very different, but with each chapter, Adichie asserts that their shared experiences, values, hopes and dreams make more sense than their differences. Crossing between alternating perspectives, Adichie uses each woman's first person chapter to step into the flow of consciousness, reaching the reader's conclusion that the same question, particularly what means being a good woman.
A brilliant return has been sealed
For fans of Adichie, Dream Count shows her illustrious return as a writer. Her social commentary and lyrical prose are as sharp as ever, and her dream count features a blend of her signature fiction blended with offensive and intense realism that places readers directly in the character's light form, raising questionable questions about identity, agency and attribution. It is a story of resilience, love and adversity experienced in the pursuit of happiness.
For those who are not fans of Adichie, just reading this book will discover why you should be there.
