Maame

September 1, 2022

From Ad�b�yọ̀, author of the Baileys short-listed Stay with Me, A Spell of Good Things brings together two contemporary Nigerian families through the intertwined lives of a young woman doctor and a boy tending to his family after his father's death. Perennially best-selling Deveraux's Meant To Be features two sisters in 1970s Kansas who must between what they want and what is expected of them (75,000-copy first printing). Though she finally feels at home at her prestigious college in 1998, Lower East Side New Yorker Isabel Rosen still faces emotional crisis in Florin's My Last Innocent Year, moving from a nonconsensual sexual encounter to an affair with a married professor; a highly touted debut (100,000-copy first printing). In Ghanaian British George's debut, Maame, Maddie finally wrests some independence from her parents--a bossy mother forever traveling to Ghana and a father who needs caretaking--and for the first time experiences living on her own; then tragedy strikes (250,000-copy first printing). In Pulitzer Prize finalist Makkai's I Have Some Questions for You, film professor and podcaster Bodie Kane gingerly returns to teach at the New Hampshire boarding school where a classmate was murdered and begins to wonder whether justice was served in convicting the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans. When Melinda's husband runs off with a young celebrity entrepreneur, they dump their newborn on Melinda's doorstep, and she ends up caring for the baby with friend Lauren, whose Greenwich Village brownstone houses a bar called The Sweet Spot, and bartender Olivia; from popular Musical Chairs author Poeppel. Winner of the Bristol Short Story Prize, Florida-born, London-based Tate goes full-length in Brutes, about a bunch of 13-year-old girls in swampy Falls Landing, FL, obsessed with preacher's daughter Sammy--and galvanized by her disappearance.

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Starred review from November 14, 2022
In this pitch-perfect debut, George captures the uncertainty, freedom, and anxiety of a London woman’s mid-20s. Narrator Maddie Wright is a people pleaser who earns the nickname Maame (“the responsible one”) from her family. She has an unsatisfying theater admin job where she is often “the only Black person in the room,” and while her older brother, James, lives his life as he wants and her mother spends most of her time in her homeland of Ghana, Maddie steps up as the main caregiver for her Parkinson’s afflicted father. Between her mother hitting her up for money and her incommunicative father, Maddie searches on Google for career guidance and dating advice, as well as remedies for panic attacks and grief. As her social life further dwindles and she worries she’ll always be a virgin, Maddie begins the “slow descent into a dull existence.” Then her mother finally comes back to take care of Maddie’s father, and Maddie moves into a flat with two roommates who are determined to help her live a larger life, starting with a list of actions to turn her into “The New Maddie.” But just as she’s getting a taste of independence, tragedy strikes at home and at work, and she’s forced to confront the microaggressions she faces in daily life, as well as ask herself how she deserves to be treated. The work’s ample magnetism resides in the savvy portrayal of Maddie as a complicated, sharp, and vulnerable person who is trying to figure out adulthood. Readers will revel in this. Agent: Jemima Forrester, David Higham Assoc.

November 1, 2022
For the past eight years, Maddie has been the primary caretaker for her father, who is suffering from a severe case of Parkinson's. She sacrificed her chance to move away to college, chase her dream career, and pursue a romantic relationship while her mother spent year-long stints in Ghana managing the family business, and her brother did his own thing. But when her mother returns and suggests Maddie move out while she takes care of her husband, Maddie is confronted with an adolescence's worth of milestones and no guidance on where to start. George's first novel is a new adult coming-of-age story written for a generation who has grown more accustomed to seeking out advice from strangers on the internet than from those they see every day. While there are moments when the plot feels predictable, George illustrates the complexities of navigating two cultures and rising from the pressure of other people's expectations beautifully. This is a clever and deeply moving debut.

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Starred review from December 1, 2022
After a loss, a young British woman from a Ghanaian family reassesses her responsibilities. Her name is Maddie, but the young protagonist in George's engaging coming-of-age novel has always been known to her family as Maame, meaning woman. On the surface, this nickname is praise for Maddie's reliability. Though she's only 25, she works full time at a London publishing house and cares for her father, who's in the late stages of Parkinson's disease. Maddie's older brother, James, has little interest in helping out, and their mother is living in Ghana and running the business she inherited from her own father. When she needs money, she always calls Maddie, who shoulders these expectations and burdens without complaint, never telling her friends about her frustrations: "We're Ghanaian, so we do things differently" is an idea that's ingrained in her. Her only confidant is Google, to whom she types desperate questions and gets only moderately helpful responses. (Google does not truly understand the demands of a religious yet remote African-born mother.) But when Maddie loses her job and tragedy strikes, she begins to question the limits of family duty and wonders what sort of life she can create for herself. With a light but firm touch, George illustrates the casual racism a young Black woman can face in the British (or American) workplace and how cultural barriers can stand in the way of aspects of contemporary life such as understanding and treating depression. She examines Maddie's awkward steps toward adulthood and its messy stew of responsibility, love, and sex with insight and compassion. The key to writing a memorable bildungsroman is creating an unforgettable character, and George has fashioned an appealing hero here: You can't help but root for Maddie's emancipation. Funny, awkward, and sometimes painful, her blossoming is a real delight to witness. A fresh, often funny, always poignant take on the coming-of-age novel.

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