Maddie is 25 years old, working as a PA and lives in London with her dad who suffers from the advanced stage of Parkinson’s. Maddie is unhappy at her job, always sad, and her father’s caregiver, and her family’s financial provider. Her mother, who spends most of her time in Ghana is overbearing with her long list of outrageous demands. After her mother decides to return, Maddie moves out of the house and starts living. She moves into a flat with two flatmates. In no time, Maddie starts dating, switches job and says yes to having fun with flatmates. Maddie knows what kind of woman she wants to be, but she will have to overcome her fear, grief, and guilt to be that woman.
This debut novel by Jessica George is written like an unfiltered journal or Maddie’s diary, Gen Z style with text conversations and google searches. The writing gave me this feeling of sharing drinks and having a conversation with a friend about the good, bad, and ugly. I like how the author unfolded Maddie’s character – Maddie is a warm and lovable character. You can tell that the author wrote Maddie's character from a place of understanding of life.
The book will take you through a roller coaster of emotions, joy, pain, laughter, rage, and rolling your eyes. I was promised laughter but prepared me for the heavy and heart-breaking emotions. I couldn’t help but feel pity for Maddie. While I felt pity and pain for Maddie, I felt deep annoyance at her mother and brother’s negligence, selfish interest, a plethora of excuses and outrageous demands. Maame centres on dealing with the complexities of family, dating, friendship, race, career, grief, guilt, and growing up. This is one of the few books that had me rooting for the character, hoping that she would break free and find her voice. Independence and self-discovery are beautiful things but if you are as clueless and naïve as Maddie, then it is going to be one long, hard, and bumpy ride.
I am Ghanaian and of course, I loved that the author sprinkled a few of the Ghanaian culture here and there in the book. It wasn’t too much yet it wasn’t too little to go unnoticed.
I have come to fully understand that all African mothers are cut from the same cloth, but Maddie’s mother showed me that her wax print is made of something else. If you think you’ve seen it all, wait till you meet Maddie’s mother. She and her son were sitting on my last nerve.
Another thing I found interesting about the book is the identification of the subtle portrayal of biases and microaggressions. Evidently, these are things that go unnoticed and are often ignored however the author did a good job bringing this centre stage through Maddie’s relationship with Ben and her job
The Audiobook narration is great, a solid 90% - a few errors with the Ghanaian names.
There were a few things that were upsetting in the story:
If Maddie is a big reader, how come she doesn’t know some things? I picked most of my knowledge on social interactions from reading.
The overreliance on Google is a bit too much – no one can be this naïve
The audiobook narrator said BABA instead of BAABA. Ghanaians know that these two names mean different things.
The part about pouring libation after two weeks is inaccurate but I am going to let this pass because the author confirms that she’s never heard it before.
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