I have mixed feelings about this first novel by Cameroonian author Imbolo Mbue. It started strong, with chapters alternating between Neni's and her husband Jende's viewpoints. Neni is in the U.S. on a student visa, working on an Associate's degree and hoping to go on to eventually become a pharmacist. Jende is a taxi driver who has overstayed his visa and is applying for asylum. Things start to look up when Jende is offered a job as a chauffeur for Clark and his family; Neni also does some temporary work for them. And then the plot jumps the rails, and it's all downhill from there. The story becomes a bit tedious at this point, with one bad thing happening after another. Both Jende and Neni behave despicably at points, very different from how their characters were presented at first. I suppose the point is to demonstrate how desperate people will stoop to anything to achieve their dreams. Jende and Neni are not escaping violence at home; they're just hoping for a better life in the U.S. With the money they've saved, they can go back to Cameroon very wealthy, so it makes the extreme measures that Neni considers questionable. Overall, this books starts out well, but becomes a bit of a slog halfway through. All that being said, this book has 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon with more than 2,000 reviews, so I'm in the minority here.
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