His Only Wife

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Over time, their relationship improves and she begins to fall in love with him – which opens a whole other can of worms regarding commitment and fidelity and what is acceptable to Afi when it comes to her marriage.

I didn’t like how she ignored Muna’s position as the person her husband had been involved with first. The story here is about a young woman named Afi who finds herself in an arranged marriage to a man who doesn’t even show up for the wedding. Themes like deception, ambition, love, and values drench the pages with conflict that evolves into an emotional rollercoaster. I LOVE books that are set in Ghana and I have such an affinity for Ghana’s culture, I wanted to inhale this book.I think the scene Peace Adzo Medie does provide is well-crafted, but just too late in a relatively short novel to make up for the many questions we have about this other relationship. The couple was forcefully and absurdly united, after which Afi was sent to live alone in the groom’s spare condo in Accra, awaiting the stranger husband’s infrequent and unexpected visits. Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding,” the young Afi Tekple narrates her story. It turns out that he is in love with another woman, whom his family disapproves of; Afi is supposed to win him back on their behalf. An intriguing and thought-provoking sentence opens the novel His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie and demands an undivided reader’s attention.

It's been a while I read it so can't remember all the details, definitely one of my favorite books of all time. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Afi ends up marrying Eli, moving to Accra to live in a fancy new apartment, having a driver to take her around, starting her apprenticeship as a fashion designer-all while waiting to meet her husband Eli for the first time. These expectations expose the simultaneous beauty and burden of family, which can be both comforting (such as Afi’s relationship with her cousin Mawusi) and a source of intense strife (such as the relationship with her uncle Pious.In His Only Wife, we meet men who are defending their societal right to live with more than one wife and women who are feeding to the men’s power by teaching their daughters to play by the rules no one is still allowed to question. She understands that “marriage shouldn’t be a never-ending competition where you spend your life fighting to be seen and chosen. The author was great at creating potential opportunities for tension but she often just releases them without exploring further or stoking the flames so there were lots of moments were my expectations for more drama were built and then allowed to fall flat. The lines between expectation and desire become increasingly blurred against the backdrop of forbidden love, personal ambition, jealousy, and self worth. While the tension between Afi and the rest of the characters made for some pretty absorbing scenes, I found myself growing increasingly frustrated by Afi.