Besides this, however, the novel is stylistically successful. Its success is to be seen in the evocation of specific, pinpoint imageries that burst open new worlds and also elicit response from the reader. Consider Kambili's mood after she had fallen in love with Father Amadi. Kambili ruminates: "I wished I were alone with him. I wished I could tell him how much I felt that he was here, how my favorite color was now the same fire-clay shade of his skin" (221). This is of course no literary firework, but lucidity in its finest form. Consider again the description of a room in the morning: "the room was not yet touched by the lavender rays of dawn" (227). Or this:

When Mama asked Sisi to wipe the floor of the living room, to make sure no dangerous pieces of figurines were left lying somewhere, she did not lower her voice to a whisper. She did not hide the tiny smile that drew lines at the edge of her mouth" (257)

The point is not to mesmerize readers with an esoteric, to a large degree, parochial and archaic world woven in proverbs, but to provide them with dainty morsels in forms of fine details they can immediately see or feel, details they can instantly imagine. To imagine is simply to make a mental image of something. Here is the secret of imagination. Consider this line from the above quotation: "tiny smile that drew lines at the edge of her mouth." This is simple, straightforward and deep. How do we dig out the treasures of deep sentences or observations in a novel? Simple! We ask questions and then try to suggest answers. For example: Why does this woman smile in that inhibited manner exactly at the moment her husband had unleashed his anger on the household? This tiny smile might aid us to see this woman as devious, or, perhaps as not really a helpless creature contrary to the way she had been portrayed. She has got her own mind. You might not like what she ultimately does. Yet she is not a zombie. Adichie enriches our imagination, and multiplies our world through her subtle use of language.

The same can be said of Seffi Atta. Consider Enitan's soliloquy:

Niyi was so tall, I'd always thought he deserved more space. The shrinkage I experienced was never worth it. He came to see Yimika almost every day, and nearly always left slamming my front door which made me miss him less and less. But I didn't blame him. He was fighting as though we were vying for the same cylinder of air: the more I breathed, the less there was for him" (331).

This is for me one of the keys to responding to the novel. Up to this point in the novel we have been initiated into the world torn apart by the lack of consideration for the other. This lack of consideration, the inability to feel the pain of the other, is epitomized by the fundamental unfairness in gender relations. Enitan's mother wilts while her (Enitan's) father blossoms largely due to the role their genders have conditioned them to play. Sheri experiences nearly the same fate, though in a different form. Enitan, unlike her mother, decides to fight back. The struggle between the sexes is delineated by the metaphor of a cylinder of air. We are grateful to the narrator, Enitan, that she is able to get into Niyi's mind to see his bellicose disposition to reality. For him, existence, living with women on equal basis, seeing your wife as an equal partner in marriage, is like sharing a cylinder of air, which would not be enough. Does this not expose the attitude of most men in our typical Nigerian society?

A successful use of metaphor is like a picture, which it is said, paints more than a thousand words. This is because metaphors create prompt associations in our minds and through these associations we are better disposed to see our world in different lights, and, perhaps understand it better. Literature is a basketful of associations and, it is the job of language to expose these associations. The common denominating definition of metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, simile, allusion etc, is that they are forms of associations. Of course, proverbs too, are forms of associations. Sometimes, however, it is advisable to distill the associations inherent in them, make them more universal, and therefore more digestible to a modern mind. As a writer you do not force depth on your story; depth comes with the degree of seriousness and respect to which you take your characters and the feeling they force you to explore. The gifted writers among us are better advised to know their characters and the world they live in and to steer clear of the world of irokos, eagles, ancestors, tortoises, drums and shrines. Let them tell us about human beings we can relate to. If you take your characters and your audience seriously, stories will emerge and when they emerge, they too will be taken seriously and they will last.