A Year in Reading: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

December 6, 2013 | 1 book mentioned 4

coverI most enjoyed Barbara Pym’s A Glass of Blessings, which I only just discovered this year. Pym is funny and witty, brilliant at portraying the middle class English of the 1950s, and in particular she does the ‘psychology of femaleness’ very well.

It is a ‘slice of ordinary life’ sort of novel, that manages to be both prim and subversive, perhaps because of the matter of fact way that the contradictions of life are shown, for example the horror of the High Anglicans about the menace of Catholicism, and the laissez-faire attitude of a woman whose husband fancies her friend.

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's work has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, and Zoetrope. She is the author of The Thing Around Your Neck and of three novels, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist, and Americanah. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.