FEAST OR FAMINE

Stay with Me (2017) is set in Nigeria in the 1980s, and up to 2008. Yejide and Akin met at university, and were married soon afterwards. Four years into their marriage, Yejide is still not pregnant. Pressures from parents and society result in Yejide, Akin, and their families doing whatever they can to make it happen – ethically or not. From the trek to the Mountain of Jaw-Dropping Miracles to other methods of bringing children into their lives, people wonder if Yejide is crazy. Yejide finally falls pregnant, and then the secrets are revealed. What has everyone sacrificed for this miracle? Do children in a marriage guarantee security, love, and permanence? Does it solve all problems? Who is right and who is wrong; who does what they believe is right, and do they even know right from wrong? Is it so wrong to desire children above all else? There is little description in this novel, as dialogue is the main vehicle to evoke feelings. Coupled with the narrative writ...

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), 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).

Black Beauty (1877, this edition 2011) is a classic Young Adults book, set in England in the 19th century. However, originally the author, Anna Sewell (1820-1878), wrote the story as an adult novel. Black Beauty is a horse and the narrator of his story. Throughout his life he has many owners, all with different behaviours and attitudes towards animals. Black Beauty, therefore, experiences love, pain, cruelty, compassion, wealth, poverty, servitude, freedom, good times, and bad times. The novel – a horse autobiography – has a range of characters, both human and horse. The horses – Ginger, Merrylegs, etc. – are all intelligent and compassionate, with a gamut of feelings, whereas the humans are less so. The chapters are short and moralistic. Written as a campaign for better treatment for horses and other animals, Sewell gets directly to the point in easy-to-read, curt language. Ginger describes the physical pain of bearing rein to Black Beauty: it ‘hurt my tongue and my...