Book 7 : The Middle Daughter by Chika Unigwe

Reading Chika Unigwe’s The Middle Daughter was emotional for me. I’ve always been that way when it relates to abuse and tragedy. I want it to end, I want to solve it, I want to punish that wicked person who causes others so much pain.

Udodi the Chorus, the first chapter, tells the Igbo story of creation with Kumosi, the wife of Chukwu, opening the door she ought not to. I was intrigued and I also loved it. 

Udodi is the first daughter, who died prematurely causing the family so much pain, her ghost continues to be part of the story acting as a sovereign narrator as a couple of chapters were written in her name.

Nani, the middle daughter of Doda and the younger sister of Udodi and older sister to Ugo experiences an upheaval in her life when both her sister and Father die in quick succession. Getting depressed for a while would have been preferable compared to what happens to her life as it’s close to being ruined or in the words of her Aunty delayed, but the years, suffering and shame she experienced living with Ephrain don’t seem like just a delay.

Ephraim a man of God from Cameroun with useless and grandiose grammar takes a teenager to a vigil and rapes her in his house afterwards, goes on to claim that God told him that she’s his wife when she gets pregnant with the silly premise that he has forgiven her for seducing him. He coerces Nani into marrying him and keeps her bound by abuse and deception.

Seven years later, battered and bruised both physically and emotionally, her only living family, Mama and Ugo have already spent two years abroad. At the same time, she has three kids to show but they are not what she had dreamt of. Ephraim is sure he has her bound after all the years, so he travels for the first time with their three children. It’s her chance to escape and give her children a different life other than the self-righteous one their father was raising them for, without even a promise of formal education.

She leaves the house for her childhood home, but nothing remains the same after so many years, she won’t take money from her mom’s dirty business, so she goes to Aunty Enuka. Ephraim gets what he deserves and she gets an opportunity to start a new life for herself and her children with money supposedly from her Father’s Will.

Chika Unigwe shows us how much could be hidden under the cloak of religion and how important it is for parents to make themselves accessible to their children. It does feel unrealistic that Nani will fall for Ephraim’s deceit given her family pedigree, certain lessons should come with affluence I think, also the fact that her mum didn’t seek her after she went to live with Ephraim, doesn’t seem like what parents will do. That aside, the book is a good one and at the end didactic.

It’s a 3.5 from me.