Love is Power Or Something Like That by A Igoni Barrett

Photo: worldliteraturetoday.org

The short story genre is possibly the hardest to execute, in my view. Despite that, this collection is almost perfect. Almost. The stories are realistic and believable. An elderly woman who has devoted her life to looking after her children cannot get any of them to accompany her to hospital when it is her turn to be looked after. A young boy fears and hates his abusive, alcoholic mother and yet cannot let her go to bed hungry. A policeman and loving husband and father becomes a monster as soon as he puts on his uniform. Two cousins explore sexuality with each other. A father takes a bullet to protect his wife and daughter from armed gangsters. A young man with halitosis describes his experience on public transport. A young scammer assumes a false identity online and extorts money from an elderly white man. A Nigerian visiting Nairobi falls in love with an NGO worker and describes the city as "grotty and untamed". (I beg to differ.) I am intrigued by the central theme that is that nebulus nexus between love and power. As a collection, the stories depict a slice of life in gritty, urban Nigeria, describing experiences that are as uncomfortable as they are universal. I say the stories  are almost perfect because while they were suspenseful and easy to relate to, they end abruptly, just as they are gathering momentum. I cannot say whether this is due to the technical difficulty of bringing a short story to a satisfying end, or whether the writer just simply did not know what to do with the various threads of the stories he had woven. Whatever the case, Love is Power Or Something Like That  deserves an enthusiastic recommendation.