READING THE CEILING
Dayo Forster
HarperCollins, pbk, $35
Review by Roz Wyatt
Most of us have probably wondered at one time or another what our lives would have been like if we had made different choices at crucial moments.
Would our lives have been better, or just different? Life is full of possibilities but does fate choose us or, by our very choices, do we choose our fate not just once but many times over?
In Reading the Ceiling, Dayo Forster gives her protagonist the chance to do more than just wonder.
‘‘There once was. A girl called Ayodele. Her story can be told in many different ways.'' [Sic]
As children, Ayodele and her sisters had a game. They looked at the stains on their bedroom ceiling, picked out patterns and made up stories.
And so, on her 18th birthday, Ayodele lies on her bed, looks at the ceiling and imagines her future. As an act of rebellion against the strict code of conduct foisted on her by her Gambian culture and her uptight mother (she of the ‘‘acid tongue and unreliable praise''), Ayodele has decided that she is going to lose her virginity that very night.
The question is, with whom? ‘‘I plan to be loose today . . I've been making up a list but find it scary to think through the options knowing I have to decide on one.''
So who are the ‘‘mangoes on her pile''? Will it be Reuben, the adoring but boring classmate; Yuan, careful, gentle and Chinese; or ‘‘the largest mango on my pile, the biggest bonga on my stall'', Frederick Adams, her girlfriend's father, ‘‘forty-two years old with a pot-bellied future''?
After setting the scene in the prologue, Dayo Forster tells three stories about how Ayodele's life pans out based on the choice of mate on that particular night.
Three different partners, three different future paths - but how much will the essence of Ayodele stay the same?
As we follow Ayodele through each scenario and get caught up in her world, we learn vicariously about Gambian life and the pressures young West African women face in the 21st century, told in Ayodele's voice. It is easy to enter her unique world and connect with her as one fate replaces another.
With exquisite prose, a delightful turn of phrase and at times acerbic wit and wry observation, Forster, who is Gambian herself, weaves village life, food, education, politics, polygamy, religion, problem mothers, friendship, loss and more into an entertaining literary triptych.
- Rosalyn Wyatt, of Queenstown, is a former bookseller and an avid reader.
