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Short story collection
Reviewer's rating: 4 on a scale of 5
Short story collection
Reviewer's rating: 4 on a scale of 5
Efo Riro & other stories by Iquo DianaAbasi is a potpourri of everything in
today’s world. The author engages you right from the cover page with the book’s
title, Efo Riro & other stories, its illustration,
which is a conglomeration of issues narrated in the work in diagrammatic
format. The cover page depicts issues of love, lust, betrayal, modernisation, obsolescence,
assertiveness, violence, gender, equity, struggle, and so on, as represented with
mammary glands, Cupid’s arrow stabbing a heart, a bottle of poison, a TV set, a
hut, a microphone and several other icons telling you the stories in this book,
even before you open the first page. If there is one book that its cover page
tells its story, it is Efo Riro &
other stories. Iquo DianaAbasi book says no to the stance that you
cannot judge a book by its cover. Its cover
is good, so also are its bough and viscera.
Iquo DianaAbasi started on a strong note with the first story, Efo
Riro, written in pidgin English with a Yoruba title (pages 1-3). She
narrates the story of a driver who lost his boss’s car to a swindler because
he was carried away with enjoyment that awaited him at the Chop & Quench
Buka. The story, which was set in Lagos, warns readers not to be foolish
because of (an expected) pleasure. As Lagosians are wont to say, “If someone lives in Lagos and he/she is
unwise, even if he/she goes to Western Germany, he would still be unwise.”
The story in its hilarity also reminds one of Peter Enahoro’s hilarious book: How to be a Nigerian. Efo Riro tori sweet die, may we not chop and quench
in life o. Iquo DianaAbasi is saying you should not only say amen, you
should also be wise.
This book, published by Parresia Publishers Ltd, Lagos, has a total of
nineteen short stories. The stories are short, issue-focused, captivating, easy
to read; each telling a distinct story.
You cannot but notice the story entitled That Place, That Night.
A sad tale of what young girls go through with unwanted pregnancy. Iquo
DianaAbasi started this story with a girl attempting to dispose of a dead foetus. ‘It
is risky evacuating a twenty-two-week old foetus, especially for a womb that
has been evacuated three times in the last eight months.’ (p.27). This statement
by the doctor [in the story] says it all. Furthermore, he (the doctor) was also
surprised that the young lady (Joyce) had conceived again so quickly despite
having ‘… one of her fallopian tubes … blocked.’, (p.27). Joyce finally lost
her womb after repeated abortions. Tom, her boyfriend was murdered. Like Joyce
and Tom, several young people are being destroyed around the world today,
because no one is guiding them on issues of sexuality and challenges of
adolescence.
Kissed by the Tarmac is another story that shows what girls go through
carrying the burden of their family. Emem’s father had disappeared. He never
returned from work. She and her mother struggled to make ends meet. She was
harassed by a village teacher, who wanted to marry her at seventeen. This story
depicts family struggle, girl-child molestation, widowhood, pain and tears of
mothers. ‘Relax! I won’t hurt you, my sweet princess’ (p.157). Etim, the
village teacher told Emem. How many girls have been so deceived by those lines,
because of their struggle to achieve their dream?
DianaAbasi puts on the front burner,
today’s challenges that must be addressed. She confidently
and freely uses Nigerian colloquial expressions. She prepares her Efo Riro & other stories with locust
beans (iru, ogiri, dawadawa) rather than using imported curry and thyme; she isn’t
interested in appeasement. Like most postmodernists, she believes that one’s
voice should count in creativity, and that, that itself, is creativity.
Efo Riro & Other Stories is available at Page Book Connossieurs and other bookstores across Nigeria.
About Reviewer
Olumide
Olaniyan is a poet, satirist, historian and thinker. His book debut
was a collection of poems, Lucidity
of Absurdity, published in March 2017. His poem, Behind Closed Doors, won the
maiden edition of Communicators League Creative Writing Contest 2017.
Several of his poems, including, Déjà vu
and Dire Silence
have been adapted into community dramas. Another poem, One Sojourn of the
Moon received an honorary mention in the Mandela Day Poetry Competition
2016.
