By Nathaniel Bivan
When you ask them under oath, many married couples would most likely admit to harbouring a deep-seated fear of discovering something dangerously irredeemable about their spouses.
Hence, when they fell in love, and then tied what should be the ‘forever’ knot, they hoped and prayed to God that none of their worst nightmares would come true–that is if they were even ‘privileged’ to experience such a (warning) nightmare. At least it would have served as a sick premonition that prepares them for the worst.
Well, Idera, a mother of three married to the ‘perfect’ husband didn’t have the luxury of The Nightmare. Away from family and friends in Nigeria, what hit her in the UK where she met Demola can be likened to a daylight robbery of ten good years. Ten years of loving and practically worshiping Demola, a husband who turned out to be a two-timing hubby to her and Lydia, his childhood sweetheart.
And that’s not all — all these begin to unravel after Demola, nicknamed Google by Idera, suddenly dies aged forty-one, leaving her with three children and ten years’ worth of memories.
‘After the End’ is so far my favourite of the year when it comes to the choice of book titles. There couldn’t have been a better title for such a story. Indeed, everything begins to unravel and make sense to the reader (and to Idera) after Demola slips away to the afterlife.
Questions like, why would a loving husband and father commit such an atrocity? How on earth was he able to keep it hidden for ten years if he wasn’t a wicked human? Or is there more than meets the eye? This is where the novel begins properly and I begin to swallow pill after pill (or should I say dose?) of the true stories Demola starred in until his eventual demise.
I hate spoilers so I’ll try hard not to reveal too much, but one thing is for sure — Olukorede S. Yishau’s sophomore novel isn’t an easy story to predict. At least not from the beginning down to the middle. I could hardly put it down because Idera had to fight one battle after another after losing her husband, her pain seeming to leak through the pages. A major one was her first son’s experience in the UK which mirrors the insecurities Nigerians and Africans face as migrants to European countries.
In this work, Yishau successfully weaves in Nigeria’s military era in the most subtle manner. You begin to recall the killing of the activist Ken Saro Wiwa, a death that represents the plight of the oil rich Ogoni people of the Niger Delta. You remember that a former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, almost rotted in jail save for the death of the then dictator General Sani Abacha.
With Justus coming into the scene, you can understand how the author leveraged on the journalist’s backstory to keep readers like myself reading up till midnight. After all, I am a lover of history, especially one woven so skillfully into a work classified as fiction. I say this because, in reality, fiction, particularly this kind written by Yishau, is always merely an excuse for telling real life stories that touch the heart.
Back to Demola’s motive.
It’s not news that foreigners to Europe and America sometimes marry citizens in order to get the green card. Was this the case with Demola? Or was he simply a victim of his past, a past where his late father deserted his mother and set his son up for a reaction the former never bargained for?
This is a tale of love and loss, of family and betrayal. But parents be warned — this book is not for children. You let them read this at your own risk. If I have one reservation about this work, it’s that I feel the explicit sex content could have been toned down. But then, it’s different strokes for different folks here. In Idera, you see a woman who doesn’t hold back when she loves a man hence the depiction of her passion. She gives her all, and her body. In Lydia you see a more conservative woman who turns into some kind of predator.
A character-driven novel, ‘After the End’ may just prove to you that Google doesn’t always have all the answers.
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Nathaniel Bivan is a solutions and conflict journalist with over a decade’s experience in journalism. He was Arts Editor for Daily Trust Newspapers and Feature Editor for HumAngle Media. His debut novel is set to be released in the last quarter of 2024.
