“I’m Very Curious About The Interior Lives Of People”: Author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ On Inhabiting Her Characters & Tackling The ‘Heavy’ Topics
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ has the greatest laugh: warm, inviting, instantly infectious. She’s currently chuckling at my admission that the raw emotion captured in her latest novel, A Spell Of Good Things – an exploration of the vast social and economic divide in Nigeria – left me in tatters. In fact, so did Stay With Me – her debut centring around a woman struggling to conceive. Is it safe to say that writing about heavy topics is her thing?
“As a writer I’m open to doing anything,” she says. “If there’s anything I know I’m interested in, it’s multiple perspectives.”
For Adébáyọ, it all begins with the characters. That is made clear with A Spell Of Good Things, told through the eyes of virtually every significant character in the book. “The way I write, it takes a while to get into things,” she explains. “I have an idea, then I feel like I have the sense of a person that I’m writing about. For [A Spell Of Good Things], I wrote what I thought was a short story from the perspective of the young boy. I got to the end of that story and couldn’t stop thinking about him, and that propelled me to feel like, ‘OK, now I have an idea that could sustain a novel because I’m curious about these lives.’”
The lives in question are two families in southwest Nigeria, whose worlds couldn’t seem further apart – teenager Ẹniọlá’s family are on the poverty line after his father loses his teaching job; Wúràọlá is the daughter of wealthy parents who are more concerned with her marital prospects. Eventually, we see these worlds intertwine in the most unexpected ways.
An exploration of the social, political and economic Nigerian climate, it’s unsurprising that this book took six years to write. Adébáyọ explains how “the skill was totally different” to anything she’s written before. “It took longer to figure out how to work nine different perspectives into something cohesive,” she says. “I had to take some time to work out the structure and the form: whose story is going to come first? Oh, and I had a baby along the way.”
Since Adébáyọ began writing A Spell Of Good Things, she not only became a mother, but released her debut, Stay With Me, which won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and Prix Les Afriques and has been published in 20 languages and in 24 countries.
Did she feel any pressure, following the success of her first novel? “What was significantly different was [when writing] Stay With Me was that I hadn’t published anything before; it was just me and the characters,” she says. “So when I came to [finish A Spell Of Good Things], it was about trying to get every other voice out of my head.”
And when it comes to the writing, for Adébáyọ, it’s not about creating the perfect first draft. If anything, she writes expecting the novel to go through various iterations. “The first [draft], I’m more interested in the person I’m writing about, so I wander around with them into dead ends and corners, then come back,” she says. “When I’m editing is when I start taking things out and planting seeds along the way. I probably only know maybe 40% of what’s going to happen when I’m writing the first draft – it’s a process of discovery for me.”
This makes sense, considering the plot of A Spell Of Good Things. Initially, it feels near-impossible that Ẹniọlá and Wúràọlá’s lives could intersect. However, Adébáyọ carefully plants those aforementioned seeds throughout, offering brief encounters between the characters to draw us closer into the household dynamics. It’s through these quiet moments that we begin to look beyond economic factors to discover the deep-rooted issues that can be evident in any family.
This is particularly evident with the two mothers and younger sisters: Iya Ẹniọlá and Yèyé; Bùsọ́lá and Mọ́tárá – the driving forces behind each family. “They were particularly enjoyable to write because they weren’t at the heart of some of the complex and complicated things that were happening to the central characters,” she says.
Adébáyọ recognises that her life experience lends itself to creating richly drawn female characters: “I’m surrounded by a lot of interesting and fascinating women,” she says. “I have a significant number of aunties and I’m curious about their inner lives. Part of what I’m doing is trying to imagine into that space. I am very curious about the interior lives of people.” As a result, she puts added time into writing men – which pays off in the male perspectives throughout the novel, particularly that joint lead, Ẹniọlá. “I guess I do a little more research and ask more questions when I’m writing men, because I haven’t lived that experience,” she says.
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This dedication to characterisation perhaps stems from Adébáyọ’s background in theatre, taking drama courses when she first got to university. “[But] I realised that if I wanted to study drama, it would require me to be in front of an audience. With fiction, I didn’t have to be. So I slowly gravitated into writing short stories,” she says. Not that Adébáyọ has completely turned her back on theatre. In 2021, her play Provenance was produced in Norwich, where she lives half the time (Adébáyọ spends the rest in Lagos), and doesn’t rule out writing more plays in the future.
But for now, her characters remain firmly on the page – though thanks to Adébáyọ’s vivid storytelling, it’s as if they are playing out their lives in front of you. “I try to inhabit a character as much as possible,” she says. “It’s important for me to think about sensations, sounds, smells and even a sense of what’s tactile – how would something feel on your skin if you were this person? I’m interested in those sensory details, and how to communicate them to the reader.”
Through their words, thoughts and emotions, Adébáyọ goes deep into her characters’ psyche, lifting the curtain on their inner struggles. Take her portrayal of the abusive nature of Wuraola’s fiancé, Kúnlé, which is initially evidenced not through depictions of his actions, but through his speech, which becomes more coercive and controlling as the book goes on.
In a novel that already explores so many ‘heavy’ topics, Adébáyọ’s dedication to portraying these often-traumatic states with such eloquence allows us to truly get to know these characters: to root for their successes and join them in heartbreak. “I did research around the topics, read non-fiction books and talked to people who were comfortable sharing what was going through their minds,” says Adébáyọ, of how she approached the themes of mental health and domestic violence. “It’s something that I wanted to think through carefully. That’s what the structure of the book makes possible; that we can look at this through different people and how they’re responding to it,” she adds.
The novel’s title is taken from a line by the character Yèyé: “Life was war, a series of battles with the occasional spell of good things.” Fittingly, it sums up Adébáyọ’s entire story. “That’s what the novel is trying to think through – all the choices and turns that accumulate into a particular outcome, which in retrospect might seem fated but wasn’t quite,” she says. “It’s also a book about choice and power; who has it and who doesn’t.”
Looking ahead, Adébáyọ wants to continue telling stories. But maybe, just maybe, her next novel might come with a humorous twist. “I’m working on something else now, and I’m thinking a lot about how people laugh to get through things. So, it might end up being a bit comical,” she says, that wonderful giggle returning. And it seems if Adébáyọ continues on this writing path, we’ll all be laughing along with her for book three.
A Spell Of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is out now
Discover Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s favourite cultural spots in Lagos here
Olivia McCrea-Hedley is Copy Editor at Service95
