Dream Count: A Braided World You Won’t Want to Leave

I didn’t want to leave the world of Dream Count. When I picked up my next book , I could feel the difference. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s sentences are layered and intricate, but reading them is an immersive, effortless experience, like floating in the sea.

Reading this novel feels like being the fifth friend. You don’t get your own chapter, but you’re right there with four women: Chiamaka (Chia) with her easy wealth and her refusal to settle for anything less than being completely known; Zikora pursuing motherhood above all else; Kadiatou adapting to decisions made for her; and Omelogor, who appears so confident and assured but starts to doubt her life choices.

The language is a delight, and is grounded in everyday concerns. Open any page and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s a paragraph from early in the book, from Chia’s point of view, while she’s living alone during the Covid lockdown:

“In this new suspended life, I one day found a grey hair on my head. It appeared overnight, near my temple, tightly coiled, and in the bathroom mirror I first thought it was a piece of lint. A single grey hair with a slight sheen to it. I unfurled it to its full length, let it go, and then unfurled it again. I didn’t pull it out. I thought: I’m growing old. I’m growing old and the world has changed and I have never been truly known.”

Dream Count reveals what matters most to these women, and they each want something different, that is fundamental to who they are.

The novel starts with Chia, then we move into the experience of the three other women before returning to Chia’s voice. Chia deflects reproach from her academic social circle about her travel writing, and we come to understand why she moves on from each of her partners to the bafflement of friends and family. Zikora comes face to face with her mother’s losses in the midst of her own. Then Kadiatou is thrust into the limelight when all her instincts are for a quiet, routine life. And Omelogor’s style feels less abrasive from within her perspective.

You get to know these African women from beneath the surface of how other people perceive them, in ways we often don’t understand the people we are closest to.