Ghostroots by ’Pemi Aguda is a sinuous collection, weaving 12 visionary stories set in a parallel version of Lagos, Nigeria. Aguda’s stories open many doors: snaking through spirit markets, forests swathed in night, high rises, white-walled labour wards, waterfalls and online forums for troubled fathers. But the beating heart of this collection rests inside the home – a site of anxiety and disorientation for its inhabitants.
One tale centres on an architect’s visit to a higgledy-piggledy house, whose shadowy insides cannot be mapped. Constructed like an Escher-ian conundrum, it both protects and entraps its female residents. Across these stories, feminised labour is endless; a sea of women striving to survive under capitalism. A house girl is contracted by her mother into domestic drudgery and market sellers tide a piecemeal existence.
Aguda draws us into a network of gnarled relationships between uneasy husbands and steadfast wives, exhausted caregivers and dreaming children. In these pages, parenthood becomes a cursed task – and not a vocation. Aguda’s narrators ponder what it means to raise boys in the modern world. Family life is fed by a violent economy of expectation across generations. All of this could swallow a person whole.
In Aguda’s stories, kindness between neighbours and friends can curdle to cruelty in an eye-blink. Her characters often sacrifice what they cherish the most – even their beloved sons and daughters, scrapping their souls into the bargain. But such offerings cannot satisfy cosmic injustice – or vengeful ancestors.
These stories may well sneak into your skull. They will soothe and haunt you, stroke your cheek, make you weep, then trip you up for good measure. This book was nominated for a wealth of awards, and rightly so. Aguda is a formidable writer.
Ghostroots by ’Pemi Aguda is out now (Virago, £10.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
