Nikki May’s second novel, This Motherless Land, opens in Nigeria in the late 1970s after 9-year-old Funke Oyenuga’s comfortable world is shattered when her mother and younger brother are killed in a car accident. Her father folds under pressure from his extended Nigerian family and sends Funke to live with her maternal grandparents at a remote estate in rural England. Isolated and miserable, a victim of her aunt Margot’s racism and condescension, Funke strives to fit in, even dropping her Nigerian name and going by Kate. But the aggressions pile on: She’s sent to the village school while her cousins Liv and Dominic are enrolled in private education, and sleeps in the attic even though there is an extra bedroom. Funke’s grandparents, though grieving, are no match for Margot’s selfish sulking. Only adventurous, spunky Liv offers Funke sympathetic companionship. But as the girls grow up, societal pressures and concerns about money, school and status get in the way of their friendship. After another traumatic accident, Funke is packed up and sent back to Nigeria to live with the father who so cruelly sent her away.
In alternating chapters, This Motherless Land follows Funke and Liv into adulthood. Liv falls into a pattern of dead-end jobs, drugs and casual sex, before getting sober and accepting steady work at a day care center, while Funke pursues a medical degree in Lagos and restarts her relationship with her father and his new family. Though rocky at first, her return to Nigeria reconnects Funke to the spirit of her mother as she realizes just how many people her mother’s life has impacted for the better.
With clever references to Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, another novel that explores class, bad parenting and a beloved ancestral home, This Motherless Land reaches back to canonical English literature while presenting something new and fresh. Though there are a few hard-to-believe plot twists, especially toward the end, May’s warm way with her characters and her sharp eye for the details of life in Lagos, as well as the outsider’s view of English culture she presents, make this an engaging and thought-provoking family-centered novel about race and reinvention.
