“The secret of Adichie’s style is simplicity, rhythm and balance. She writes a poet’s sentences. On the cashew tree outside the bedroom window, ‘the bell-shaped yellow fruits hung lazily, drawing buzzing bees that bumped against my window’s netting.’ There is no wilful exoticism: no playing to the gallery of Western expectation; but surprising and elegant juxtapositions keep the reader’s attention poised: ‘Dust-laden winds of harmattan came with December. They brought the scent of the Sahara and Christmas.’ She works through delicate insights and half-glimpses; despite the tough and intractable material, and her rigour in confronting it, the final impression of the novel is of gentleness, gravity and grace.”
From “I have washed my feet out of it,” Hillary Mantel’s essay on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the LRB.