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The Secret Lives of the Four Wives by Lola Shoneyin: book review





The Secret Lives of the Four Wives (2011) is set in Ibadan, Nigeria. Baba Segi is advised by the Teacher (“the noble one whose rays of wisdom have guided me through darkness”) to return to his city and marry the woman his mother has chosen for him “lest the women of Ayikara bitter my blood with their bile.” Thus in 1984 Baba Segi takes Iya Segi as his first wife, who bears him two children, Segi and Akin.

As Baba Segi says, “Lust points its finger at every man and soon after I married, the women of Ayikara began to look like princesses and goddesses.” He was happy to see these women while being married, but the Teacher advised, “Two women at home are better than ten in a bush.” And so Baba Segi takes a second wife, Iya Tope, in 1989 as a peace offering from a desperate farmer. She has three children: Tope, Afolake, and Motun. In 1994 he takes a third wife, Iya Femi, because she “offered herself with humility” and gave him two children, Femi and Kole. Now with seven children, he chose his fourth wife, Bolanle, in 1999. She accepted his offer of marriage for all the fineries of life - and to get away from her mother. Each wife had their own reasons for marrying Baba Segi for he wasn’t the wealthiest or most handsome man in town.

Three wives managed amicably, but when the fourth wife was educated with a degree, it upset the harmony in the home. Jealousy and spite resulted. But Bolanle, after two years, had not given her husband a child, and children were most important to Baba Segi. And that’s when the secret is unearthed. Baba Segi falls into disgrace and visits the Teacher once more for advice.

This is a novel narrated by the four wives of the polygamist Baba Segi, as well as Baba Segi and his driver. There are also chapters in third person narrative. Together they form a psychological web of relationships between husband and wives, between wives and wives, between wives and children, between Baba Segi and the children, and between the children.

This novel is a storytelling feat. For such a mixed bag of narratives, the novel is remarkably well connected and fluid, transitioning effortlessly from one narrative to the other, as more and more about the household is revealed. There is nothing fancy or complicated in the descriptions or plot, yet it is about the complexities of a family of wives and children, their loyalties and sympathies, their greed and revenge, their quick wit and slow seething, and their generosities and wickedness. It is simplistically, elegantly, and dramatically told, building suspense and drama until the end, when the secret changes their lives forever.


MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).



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