'Dream Count' is truly an unforgettable read

“Immigrants are desperate to raise children who think they have a right to dream.”

— “Dream Count,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It has been a very long wait since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s previous wildly successful (National Book Critics Circle Award) novel “Americanah” was published in 2013. It’s difficult not to write about how successful Adichie is as a novelist. “Purple Hibiscus” won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her epic novel about the Nigeria-Biafra war “Half a Yellow Sun” also won the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Best of the Best” award. It has been 13 years since we have been graced by Adichie’s brilliant writing and she doesn’t disappoint with “Dream Count.”

“Dream Count” is a dramatic book that explores the female experience as it traverses Nigeria and the United States. Rather than the ever-popular coming of age books that fill bookstores across the country these days, “Dream Count” is more of a middle-aged life experience where three Nigerian friends whose lives haven’t panned out with respect to marriages, relationships and motherhood. The book is also about grief, the immigrant experience, and familial and societal expectations between sometimes very traditional Nigerian families and the new generation of Nigerian women.

The plot centers around the following characters:

Omelogor who works for a corrupt bank in Nigeria from which she siphons funds in a “Robyn Hood” scheme she uses to fund female business ventures. She also writes an anonymous blog titled “For Men Only,” that offers advice to men about how to conduct themselves with the women in their lives. She’s an unforgettable and unapologetic character.

Zikora who is a sharp, successful lawyer in Washington, D.C., refers to men who have disappointed her as “thieves of time.”

Kadiatou is a Guinean maid at the luxury hotel in Washington, D.C. She is a widowed mother to a teenage girl. Her story is based on a real-life case in 2011 in which a Guinean immigrant maid accused the chief of the International Monetary Fund of sexual assault in a popular New York City Hotel. The maid was torn apart by the media and the case was dropped because she was said to have lied. The author’s note at the end of this book highlights this case and her reason for including the story in her book. The author’s note alone is worth a read.

Chiamaka is a gorgeous travel writer who comes from a very wealthy Nigerian family. She coins the phrase “Dream Count” after the more derogatory term “body count” that many young people use as a reference to how many sexual partners they have had. Chiamaka is more optimistic in her pursuit of relationships in which she seeks “to be known, truly known, by another human being.”

Adichie scorns those who generalize. In doing so, she offers interrogations of liberal tendencies toward trite remarks on racism. She says, “Americans are heedlessly drunk on their certainties.”

“Dream Count” is a beautifully written book that makes the reader find sympathy through fiction. There’s so much to unpack in this book — it is truly an unforgettable read.

Deborah Condit is the owner of Books on the Bosque, located at 6261 Riverside Plaza Lane, Suite A-2, or at booksonthebosque.com.