Book Review: DREAM COUNT

Title: Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Book Beginnings quote:

I've always longed to known, truly known, by another human being.

Friday56 quote:

I thought often of Kadiatou's words: The spirit cannot break, even if your heart breaks. It had irritated me, but my irritation may have been the reflexive refusal of an unwanted truth. She was comforting me and maybe warning me. Don't let your spirit be destroyed, even if he breaks your heart. Your heart can break while your spirit remains whole.

Summary: The novel is about the lives and connections of four women from West Africa (Nigeria and Guinea) -- Chimaka, a Nigerian travel writer living in the US; Zikora, her best friend and a lawyer living in Washington, D.C.; Omelogor, Chimaka's cousin, a banker in Nigeria; and Kadiatou, a Guinean woman raising her daughter alone in the US, is befriended by Chimaka. As the women navigate their relationships and cope with the expectations of their cultures and their parents, especially their mothers, they also lean on each other for support and comfort.

The women's stories are told in separate sections starting with Chimaka. Back stories about their childhoods in Africa, their relationships with families and men, their religion, and culture fill out each section.

Review: In the author's note, Adichie says Dream Count is a novel about the connections between women but it is really about her mother. Her mother died in 2021 just nine months after her father's death. Adichie's way of coping with her grief was to write a story about women. Though the book focuses on the aforementioned women, it is also about their relationships with their mothers and with motherhood (or lack of it) in general. 

Two inspirations were the genesis of Dream Count. The first was a character, Zikora, from one of Adichie's earlier stories and the second was a real event that happened to a Guinean immigrant named Nafissatou Diallo in 2011. Diallo was a maid in a hotel in New York when she was attacked and sexually assaulted by a guest at the hotel. Because she was an immigrant and because she was deemed to be a liar (about another situation altogether) the case was eventually dropped. Adichie followed the story on the news and it really sparked something in her imagination. Her character Kadiatou was based on what Adichie imagined Diallo's experience was like, a woman failed by the country (USA) she trusted. Knopf, Dream Count's publisher, required that Adichie write an author's note to explain that Kadiatou was a character she created, not a retelling of Diallo's actual story. Even though Adichie wrote the coda under duress it was quite good and helpful to me as a reader. In the conclusion Adichie mused, “My mother would, I think, have liked the character of Kadiatou. I imagine her reading this novel and then sighing and saying, with a kind of resignation and fellow-feeling, Nwanyi ibe m. My fellow woman” (NYT Review of Books).

Each of the four women in Dream Count are not living the life they thought they'd be living when they were younger. Each imagined marriage and children as part of their future. Having children, especially boys, is very important in some West African cultures. If a boy child is not produced some men take on second wives to gain an heir. This is what happened to Zikora's mother. She was a first wife but got replaced, yet not divorced, when she didn't have a boy child. Both Chimaka and Omelogor found satisfaction in their careers and didn't want to settle for just anyone. Chimika had relationships with many men but she never found that spark with any of them that let her know they really knew her as a human being. The title of the book was from the term "dream count" which Chimka referred to as relationships she had in her quest to find true, all-knowing love. Her friends referred to this count as her "body count."

I listened to the audiobook of Dream Count expertly narrated by four women -- the author narrated Chimaka's sections; Janina Edwards as Kadiatou; Sandra Okuboyejo as Zikora; and A'rese Emokpae as Omelogor. Each of the women had the lovely lilt and cadence of West African speakers. The audiobook is 19 hours long but it only took me 13 1/2 hours of listening time because I bumped up the listening speed to 1.4. That is way faster than what I usually select for a listening speed but I found the narration too slow for my American ears. This is ironic because at one point one of the characters complains about how fast Americans speak and in such a high voice register we use. Ha! That said, I think that listening to this book enhanced my reading pleasure since the narrators gave the story a very African vibe, which involves speaking slower and in lower tones.

Good fiction should, in my opinion, help readers consider larger truths, even if those truths don't jive with what the reader previously thought. These truths, therefore, may make the reader uncomfortable or struggle a bit to adjust to new thinking. In Dream Count Adichie doesn't shy away from making some uncomfortable observations about life in America and about Americans. Omelogor, for example, kept getting into clashes with her classmates in her masters program at an American University. She would say something about her life in Nigeria and these "liberal" students would jump on her, telling her that was backwards, or racists, or wrong based on their half-backed American ideals. In their eyes, the American way was the only right way to do things worldwide. This exasperated both Omelogor and me, the reader. I squirmed but I knew in my heart what Adichie was saying through her characters was an accurate observation about Americans and their views.

Dream Count was named as a finalist for the 2025 Women's Prize book award. Adichie lives in Baltimore, Maryland which makes Dream Count a candidate for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. I sure hope these selection committees take a hard look at this thought-provoking book. I also think it would make a tremendous book club selection. I bet it would spark a spirited discussion. Here are some pretty good discussion questions for the book. A place to start. When I have a minute, I'll pop back here and add a few questions of my own. (Discussion Questions.)

My rating: 5 stars.

-Anne