The impatients A novel

Cameroonian writer Amal's English-language debut follows the fates of three women who are forced into polygamy as teenage girls. Ramla, at 17, longs to break out of her insular compound in northern Cameroon to attend university and become a pharmacist. Films from the West and Bollywood help embolden her, and she plans to marry her brother's best friend, who would allow her to continue her studies, but she's betrothed against her will to Alhadji Issa, an older politician who supports her male family members' interests. Ramla's older sister Hindou is made to marry an alcoholic man who beats and rapes her, and Amal implies he may take other wives as well. After Ramla's marriage to Alhadji, she faces further hardships from Alhadji's first wife of 20 years, Safira, who sabotages Ramla out of fear. Once Safira realizes she's gone too far, she and Ramla talk candidly for the first time about their situation. Though the two women's interaction offers glimmers of hope, for the most part Amal unleashes a relentless litany of the horrors that the women face in marriage, as the women's relatives blame them for their husbands' poor tempers and unfaithfulness. The story feels incomplete, as it concentrates almost exclusively on the women's troubles without further developing the characters. This provides a stark and unflinching view of an oppressive culture, though as fiction it falls short. (Oct.)

Two Cameroonian sisters navigate the trials of arranged marriages. According to the customs of their Fulani Muslim household, teenage sisters Ramla and Hindou--who live in a massive compound with their father's four wives and 28 other children--have always known their fates rest with their family's patriarchs, eager to "finally offload their responsibilities by entrusting us, still virgins, to other men." Though Ramla and Hindou anticipate this eventuality, it's no less distressing when the two are unceremoniously promised to, respectively, a much older businessman and a perpetually drunk cousin. "Patience, my girls! Munyal! That is the most valuable component of marriage and of life," the two are instructed as their weddings approach, and a highly specific marital code emerges from family's whispers and warnings--rules range from "Do not be scatter-brained" to "Valorize him so that he will honor you." Intelligent and strong-willed Ramla, who dreams of becoming a pharmacist, is set to marry Alhadji Issa, a respected businessman with a beautiful and possessive wife; meanwhile, Hindou dreads a union with her drink- and drug-fueled cousin, Moubarak. As the weddings approach, the sisters mourn the lives they'd envisioned for themselves; and once they're living with their husbands, they must contend with entirely new issues of power, autonomy, and social propriety. When one girl begins to encounter abuse, she must decide between upholding familial respectability and saving herself, bringing the family's delicate equilibrium to a crisis point. In this English-language debut--broken into sections narrated by Ramla, Hindou, and Ramla's co-wife, Safira--Amal burrows deeply into the immensely private Fulani world of girls and women. Though the girls' relationships with their husbands are sometimes flatly rendered, the book's real complexity lies in its finely textured depictions of relationships between women--mother and daughter, co-wives, sisters--full of jealousy, compassion, and emotional energy. Though it never takes any particularly original twists or turns, its excavation of characters' emotional states and of a specific marital culture is engaging. Revealing if sometimes predictable. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.