Tomorrow I Become a Woman

Written By Linda Malek

Tomorrow I Become A Woman by Aiwanose Odafen

Reviewed by Linda
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Thank you @simonschuster for this copy!

What an incredible debut novel that I’ll be recommending time and time again. Despite at times being heartbreaking and bleak it is thought-provoking all the same. It’s been a while since I’ve been gripped by a book this much.

Tomorrow I Become A Woman follows the evolution of Obianuju “Uju”, a naive and budding university student as she becomes a wife and mother in a society that glorifies and upholds the latter above all else. In parallel, we watch Uju’s two best friends, Chinelo and Adaugo, take on marriage and motherhood. The friendship between these three women is the beacon of hope in what is otherwise a very relentless story.
Although Uju is enamoured with her Yoruba university tutor, Akin, it is Chigozie, the Igbo charismatic choir singer, that woos her into becoming his wife.

But that was “Yesterday”.

The romance ends and in its place begins Uju’s reality, her “Today”: two decades of domestic abuse and torture all in the misguided spirit of patriarchy, culture and toxic masculinity.

The book is set during the Biafra war and the author writes with detail about life at this time and the aftermath. Uju becomes a mother to three daughters, and it is her eldest child who witnesses and even experiences Chigozie’s abuse. With no son to carry the family name, Uju has a target on her head.

I found Uju’s mother hard to stomach but I had to remind myself that she thought she was doing her best by her daughter, having gone through the same herself.

I also wished a different ending for Chigozie, but alas whether you love or hate the characters, Uju’s journey will have you reading till the last page with bated breath until Uju finds her feet and begins her new chapter, “Tomorrow”.

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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