In turn-of-the-millennium Nigeria, an Indian immigrant named Kavita is married to a Nigerian man. They have one son, young adult Vivek. On the same day that rioters burn the local marketplace to the ground, Kavita finds Vivek on her doorstep, naked and wrapped in cloth, dead of a head wound. From there, the progression of the novel is nonlinear, moving among Kavita's desperate search for answers, Vivek's life as a kid who was always different, and the perspectives of Vivek's friends and family in this complex multicultural community.

Like Emezi's earlier novel Freshwater, this one clearly draws inspiration from their own life and childhood, and it benefits from the same keen eye for the reality of what culture and tradition look like on the ground. But it's not as directly autobiographical, reading less like a memoir and more like an actual novel. The prose style and handling of the themes really worked for me. Vivek is queer in a country where homosexuality is illegal, but Emezi hasn't written a story where queer people are tragic victims, nor have they written a one-note condemnation of Nigerian culture. They include a variety of queer characters who are flawed and human, some of whom are pretty well-adjusted given the circumstances, and some of whom make terrible mistakes. Despite the difficult subject matter, the book orients itself towards a world where some of these kids will grow up okay, some of the ignorant will learn, and the future of queer Nigeria hasn't been written yet.

spoilery thoughts

It was clear to me fairly early on that Vivek was some flavor of transfeminine (anachronistic labels aren't used, but bigender seems about right, and 'he' and 'she' are both accepted). Circumstantial evidence leads you and many of the characters to suspect he was killed in a hate crime. Towards the end, this scenario seems almost certain when you learn that he went out presenting as a woman on the night of his death, even though his friends tried to stop him because they thought it was too dangerous.

But "almost certain" is the operative phrase. As it turns out, Vivek wasn't murdered. He died in an accident that could have happened to anyone at any time, and it had nothing to do with his presentation or his queerness at all.

This subverted expectation turns the entire book on its head and makes it land in a completely different place than I thought it was going to. The message of the book is not that being queer will get you killed in this terrible, terrible world; it's that nobody knows what the future will bring, so you shouldn't let fears of what might happen hold you back. You should be yourself—and allow yourself joy—while you still have time.

This ending really stunned me and it took me a bit to process it. I think it's the right ending, but I didn't see it coming at all, and it made me feel the book had turned a sobering and much-needed mirror on me and my own assumptions about queer stories and about the world.

I don't know what I think about Osita (Vivek's cousin/boyfriend) keeping the full truth to himself. Letting Vivek's parents believe he was murdered opens the door for them to feel empathy rather than disgust, but can that be a justification to tell such a massive lie by omission? I don't know, it's messy, but so was Osita and Vivek's relationship from start to finish.

The book is not long (250 pages) and I think it could have benefited from being a little longer and spending some more time with each character and their arc. Some threads seemed to wrap up too quickly at the end. But overall I found it a thought-provoking read and I'm up for more of Emezi's work. Next I'll probably go for their YA novel Pet.