From the start, a teenage boy gets handed a tough set of cards and his circumstances get complicated as the book moves along.

We meet Obiefuna, a teenage boy in Port Harcourt on the day that his father comes home with a distant relative, and inexplicably (and almost immediately) he finds himself fascinated and oddly attracted to this other older boy. While for him, this is a very new and confusing revelation of himself his parents immediately know what it is and they respond very differently.

In the case of the father, he decides to instantly ship him off to a boy’s boarding school to toughen him up-  to make him man up while for his mother who happens to be emotionally close to him, this becomes the beginning of a strange distance, the markings of estrangement from her favorite son.

The entire book explores Obiefuna’s journey, thoughts and experience as he is trying to work out this thing about himself, the fact that he is queer. He tries to understand it and is repeatedly shocked about how other people respond to the fact. From early on, he can instinctively sense that it’s not a safe or a welcome fact so with his new friends at school, his family members, and later on after he leaves the seminary school, he is trying to hide that part about him.

The book is an exploration of the boy’s coming to himself and his queer identity. It interrogates the effect of this fact on his self-image, societal acceptance, and sense of belonging and its effect on the relationships close to him.

You can expect to enjoy the experience of being inside a character’s head. The terror, the indecision, and the difficult circumstances are very palpable, however, when this doesn’t let up, for the reader, the book starts to feel singular in thought and maybe even ‘agendary’ (I know I just made up a word)- especially as the story progresses with little exploration of the other characters. This is compounded when Obiefuna gets thrown into the middle of iconic circumstances in recent history. Towards the end, while this move made for a richer plot, it nonetheless left me feeling like I was being herded towards a certain goal all along.

Sounds like a book you would love to read? Get your copy here

Catch more books banter on my Instagram page