African-born poet Lola Shoneyin makes her fiction debut with The Secret Lives of Babi Segi’s Wives, a perceptive, entertaining, and eye-opening novel of polygamy in modern-day Nigeria.
The struggles, rivalries, intricate family politics, and the interplay of personalities and relationships within the complex private world of a polygamous union come to life in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives — Big Love and The 19 th Wife set against a contemporary African background.
My Review of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's wives by Lola Shoneyin.
If you want to have a glimpse at a polygamous family, then this book will do the perfect magic.
A polygamist, Baba Segi, who feels he is the norm, prides himself as the father of seven kids from three different wives.
He is a successful business man, who tries his best to provide for his wives, Iya Segi, Iya Tope and Iya Femi.
The wives in turn grudgingly manage to accommodate themselves, and it is easier for Iya Segi and Iya Femi, like-minded women, to team up against the timid second wife, Iya Tope.
They try to live peacefully as co-wives in the family, but draw the line when the man of the house introduces a new wife to the flock.
It's easy to hate Bolanle the new wife, because she is the only educated one among them.
So Iya Segi and Iya Femi, who feel threatened by the new wife's poise and personality, decide to make the place hell for her, so she'd quietly leave.
Because they cannot have her steal the affection their husband have for them, and which they have suffered to earn over the years, they try everything they can to frustrate her, but shoot themselves in the leg instead.
The book is written in simple sentences, and multiple perspectives.
It is structured in such a way you see the the story in the eyes of different people, which in turn aid in understanding the plot better.
If I had not read Iya Femi's part, I'd have simply hated her and termed her a wicked woman because of how she treats Bolanle.
But she, and the other wives all have their stories, bitter pasts that nobody else knows about. They all have their secrets under lock and key, which will be unraveled before the end of the book.
