Norma Fivaz

Very helpful life lessons are woven into this novel. Nora starts off looking back at her life, full of regrets due to wrong choices. She believes she comes from a lineage of failure. She decides to die, at midnight, on a given day. She takes 2 anti-depressants, & goes into a stupor state between life & death. There she enters a library, meets her much loved librarian from childhood, and Mrs Elm points her into the direction of book after book….each taking Nora into a different life, different career, different trajectory….each according to the choice she has taken. Beautiful quotes from well-known authors are used to enforce the life lessons that come to the surface in this novel. Well crafted.

A sobering novel, that reflects the dire situation if many teenage girls in Nigeria still today, in the twenty first century! Father’s by enlarge don’t see the bigger picture of enabling their daughters to obtain a good basic education. Instead these girls, at the tender age of 14-15 y of age, get sold off for either child labor or as 3rd or 4th wives older men. Adunni, the main character, wins one’s heart & sympathy early on. She is sweet natured, smart & courageous. Her tenacity & perseverance pay off in the end and buys her freedom back. A worth while read!