Starred review from July 1, 2024
Get comfortable and grab a box of tissues, because Dar� is back with the eagerly anticipated sequel to The Girl with the Louding Voice (2020). The night before 14-year-old Adunni goes to school in Lagos, a day she's been dreaming of for years, two elders from her village arrive to drag her back to the past she spent a year running from. Her guardian, Ms. Tia, is also swept into the turmoil, forced to choose between uncovering a dark secret that has weighed her down for 20 years or saving Adunni. Adunni, caught in a society that undervalues young girls and the women they become, is about to discover how far her "louding voice" can reach. In And I Roar, Dar� expands the narrative beyond Adunni and her trials to encompass the stories of multiple girls and women, from diverse classes and cultures, caught in the tension between tradition and modernity. Dar�'s work embraces contemporary ideas and stylistic choices while honoring the foundation they are built on. She respects the beauty of Nigerian culture but does not shy away from critiquing its harmful parts, particularly the disempowerment of young women. Dar� delivers a gut-wrenching reminder that every woman has a lion inside her waiting to break free.
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July 1, 2024
Dar�'s best-selling debut, The Girl with the Louding Voice, was an LJ Best Book and a Read with Jenna pick. Her follow-up also stars 14-year-old Adunni, who has escaped an arranged marriage and indentured servitude and is excited to start school in Lagos, where she has found refuge with Tia. But she may not be safe for long. Prepub Alert.
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Starred review from July 29, 2024
Daré’s harrowing sequel to The Girl with the Louding Voice chronicles 14-year-old Adunni’s flight from the indentured servitude she’d fallen into after fleeing her husband. Having escaped her abusive employer Big Madame, Adunni now lives with Big Madame’s neighbor Tia in Lagos, Nigeria. Adunni’s plans to start school are interrupted when she’s forced to return to the village of her birth to atone for the death of her husband’s second wife. Tia, a young professional with painful secrets of her own, accompanies Adunni back to her village, and in alternating narration, the two recount the hours leading up to what could be a mortal reckoning for Adunni and several other girls, who have been accused of causing a drought. While Tia desperately tries to phone for help, Adunni and the others are paraded through the village, then left in the forest, with fatal consequences. The juxtaposition of Tia’s urbane voice and Adunni’s heavy dialect lends itself to Daré’s unforgettable contrast of urban, modern Nigeria with its rural, tribal counterpart. Moreover, Adunni’s natural lyricism is as powerful as her resilience. It adds up to an indelible portrait of a turbulent girlhood. Agent: Felicity Blunt, Curtis Brown U.K.
Starred review from August 1, 2024
Nigerian British writer Dar� follows upThe Girl With the Louding Voice (2020) with a suspenseful, eventful sequel. The previous novel followed 14-year-old Adunni, who was raised in a Nigerian village with ambitions of becoming a teacher; after the death of her mother, though, her father forced her to marry an older man who already had two wives. When Khadija, the second wife, died during pregnancy, Adunni was afraid she'd be blamed, so she turned to a local man, Mr. Kola, who offered her an escape to Lagos--and then sold her into indentured servitude. As this novel begins, just days after the previous one ended, Adunni is staying with Tia, the neighbor who rescued her, and is about to enter a boarding school on scholarship. Unfortunately, those plans are interrupted when Mr. Kola and a chieftain from Ikati, the village where she grew up, appear at her door and accuse her of murdering Khadija, demanding she return to the village for judgment. Determined to clear her name, she goes with them--and Tia goes, too. The action unfolds over the next 24 hours as Adunni, awaiting trial, gets to know other girls accused of various "crimes" such as resisting genital mutilation and causing the failure of crops. Meanwhile, Tia journeys with Adunni's younger brother to find male relatives who will be able to attest for Adunni and the other girls. The novel alternates between the voice of Adunni, speaking in a version of English she has cobbled together, and Tia, an environmental activist who was raised in an upper-middle-class family and educated in the U.K. She has her own set of problems: Her estranged mother is dying, and her husband has discovered a stack of letters she wrote to a mysterious lover. Dar� doesn't shy away from melodrama; deaths, injuries, and children born to fathers whose identities are concealed pile up rapidly. But readers willing to go along for a ride will be treated to prose that is alternately poetic and comic, two heroines worth cheering for, and sharp insights into the contrast between urban and rural Nigeria. Part old-fashioned adventure yarn, part feminist manifesto, and completely captivating.
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