Dele Weds Destiny

Written By Linda Malek

Dele Weds Destiny by Tomi Obaro
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Thank you to @sceptrebooks for this copy!

Three longtime university friends reunite after 30 years in Lagos, and who doesn’t love a book about sisterhood, friendship and strong women protagonists?

Despite their stark differences, Zainab, Enitan and Funmi become the tightest unit at a University in Zaria, northern Nigeria. The author describes each character’s upbringing in detail that I felt I knew each of their traits and personalities. The women are from varying walks of life and they’re all dealt a completely different hand following university. In addition, the author doesn’t over explain or simplify nuances and details of Nigerian culture which makes a change from a lot of the work I’ve read recently by African writers.

Obaro takes care to build these characters up - we go through the highs and lows of friendship, marriage and motherhood, moving abroad and the mother/daughter dynamic is explored too.

Many decades later, the women are set to meet at Funmi’s daughter, Destiny’s wedding in Lagos. Although it was great to read about Nigerian weddings in all their splendour and glory, the wedding storyline didn’t really add anything apart from a way for all 3 women to reunite. I wish the author had created a different scenario for the friends to meet and really thought the actual plot through because the “bang” at the end wasn’t quite a bang but an abrupt thud. A pleasant read, but the book had so much more potential.

Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

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