WINNER 2013 – National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction FINALIST 2014 – Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction FINALIST 2014 – Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction LONGLISTED 2015 – International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award A searing new novel, at ...

NUBClub didn't particularly like this book, although there were defenders in the crowd. We all agreed that the book's look at two Nigerian ex-lover on their parallel journeys in America and Africa offered some settings and context we had not been exposed to before. All of us were interested in Obinze's story, and how his story becomes a picture of how people navigate immigration and how he finds success. Also, we all liked the question the book raises about assimmilation and authentic identity, and the way that Ifemelu transforms in the US -- both to her eventually success as a blog as well as her alienation from her home community -- is an interesting counterpoint about what "successful" immigration can do to an individual. The main issue we had with the book is that most of us found Ifemelu insufferable as a character. The scenes in the hair salon, which take up much of the novel, reveal her as a judgmental and arrogant narrator, and we often found ourselves siding with the people she was criticizing. Her plight in America was not that sympathetic to us, because she was just so awful a character. And when your story is at its heart a romance, it's a hard pill to swallow when you find one of the reunited lovers awful and not worthy of the relationship. The writing here is competent but not noteworthy, so the book basically lived or died on the plot and characters, and so not liking Ifemelu killed the book for most of us. Those that liked the book just did not find her distasteful, and as a result, enjoyed the love story told through differing experiencing of immigration. NUBClub as a whole can't recommend this one, but it might be worth glancing at one of Ifemelu's salon chapters to see if it offends you. If it doesn't, Americanah may be for you.