Nikki May

Novel 2024 | 340 pages

Lizzie and Margot are sisters, raised in England. Lizzie meets a Black man from Nigeria, marries him, moves to Nigeria, and her family disowns her.  Later, both become mothers.  Margot is cold, distant, mean, and greedy.  Lizzie is warm and loving.

But this book is not about Margot and Lizzie.  It is about their daughters Liv (Olivia) and Funke (Katherine/Kate).  Lizzie, along with her son Femi and her daughter Funke are in a horrific car accident near their home in Nigeria.  Only Funke survives. In his immeasurable grief, as well as his anger with Funke for living when his wife and son are dead, Funke's father sends her to England to live with her Aunt Margot.  Liv and Funke meet for the first time, at about ten years old.

Liv takes Funke under her wing.  It is a challenging adjustment for Funke, where her skin doesn't match the rest of the family nor her school or neighborhood. The girls transcend vast differences in culture, food, values, even morals, to become fast friends. We delight in their discoveries, shenanigans, coming of age together.

Until one night, a few years later, they go out to a bar together and everything turns topsy-turvy and inside out.  Again Funke (now called Kate) is shipped back to her other country (Nigeria) through no volition of her own.  And we follow them both into adulthood.

I liked this book.  I liked Liv and Funke.  It wasn't a page-turner for me, but I recommend This Motherless Land as a readable tale about the challenges of growing up in a cultural divide, and about the unbreakable love between two cousins, despite what the world throws at them.

March 2025