Stay With Me
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Scorching, gripping, ultimately lovely.
Margaret Atwood
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Adebayo is an astounding storyteller – an exciting addition to the emerging voices in African writing.
Jennifer Makumbi, author of Kintu and winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
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This impressive debut creates, in deceptively simple prose, a portrait of a marriage in crisis in a deeply patriarchal and oppressive society.
Mail on Sunday
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Affecting and powerful . . . Adebayo’s prose is a pleasure: immediate, unpretentious and flecked with whip-smart Nigerian-English dialogue. There are only three first-time novelists on this year’s Baileys longlist; Adebayo deserves her spot among them.
Sunday Times
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Stay with Me is that rarest of accomplishments – a richly imagined novel that boasts not only great literary sophistication but also a narrative drive so compelling that one finds it difficult to put down the book. With impressive nuance, Ayobami Adebayo brings her own original take to bear on an experience that remains a motif in the lives of many women around the world. Yejide and the other complex characters populating this book will continue to haunt your memory long after the last page has been read.
Rotimi Babatunde, Winner 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing
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A thoroughly contemporary style that is all her own . . . clever and funny . . . despite the intense sadness of her subject matter, she has produced a bright, big-hearted demonstration of female spirit.
Guardian UK
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Both intimate and sweeping, Stay With Me is the story of Yejide and Akin, in love but torn apart by not only their own desire to have children, but the weight of expectation from their families and community. Adebayo’s exploration of grief, motherhood and how sometimes you just can’t stop loving someone is exquisite.
Stylist
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A compulsive read . . . Just brilliant. Adebayo is an astounding storyteller – an exciting addition to the emerging voices in African writing.
Jennifer Makumbi, author of ‘Kintu’ and winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
