It appears as though one construct that continues to fascinate Yishau’s intellect is the duality of human nature, a construct he is yet to intellectually move on from, demagnetise or permanently shelve since his sophomore publication, Vaults of Secrets.
This time, however, he explores, through the novel’s central character, the mess and mental distress that comes with discovering a person’s dual nature.
In Idera’s case, it becomes difficult to espouse the newly-found side of her now-deceased husband of 10 years.
Yishau reminds us once again that every individual wears a veil and behind that veil, there are many secrets waiting to be unearthed. He does this quite cinematically, inviting readers to spectate the conflict that evokes the thematic clusters of the novel—duality, mystery, modern life chaos, angstful desire for place in the diasporan mind, love and forgiveness (as a possible calmative to Idera’s brand of mental conflict).
Whether you are contemporary literary fiction completist or not, the novel has a realistic or theatrical charm that pulls you to itself.
In this novel, Idera, the novel’s central character, rouses from a mental clog, following the death of her husband into another mentally disarming clog resulting from the mystery surrounding the husband she had known through years of pre-marriage and marriage.
What is this mystery or what is responsible for this mystery that forces Idera out of a mournful state into an awakening that shakes her, leaving her feeling hypnotised, while forcing her to dismember the picture of her husband, Ademola “Google” Philips, and repicture him as a stranger?
This happens when Lydia confronts Idera and reveals that she had been a long-term partner to Demola with a bond so strong, it produced a child. Lydia tells Idera, “I’m just a grieving woman like you, except I’m sick of being in the shadows. Shortly before Demola died, the urge to leave the shadows overwhelmed me. I think you must know that my son, the boy who just went upstairs with your boys, is also Demola’s son”.
Upon this revelation, it appears that death is not the only force that estranges her from her husband; she had lived through her marriage estranged from her husband’s otherness. What follows this realisation is curiosity and a recoil to the past that moulded her into Google’s wife, a man whom her first impression of was glitzy and associated with knowledge, the reason behind the surprising nickname you encounter upon entering the novel—Google died on the day the UK voted to leave the European Union.
Founded upon this first impression and subsequent impressions, she soon realises that illusion had cocooned her marriage and she is finally awake to see her husband’s otherness. In the midst of this, Idera’s friend, Suliat, plays a role in helping her cross over from a depressive state of mind to forgiveness.
Of course, in a maddening modern society like the United Kingdom, coping mechanisms are necessary. Idera is not only mourning the death of her husband, she is bemoaning the death of the illusion she lived through; and Suliat’s support helps her in picking up herself. She also finds succour in the person of Justus, a journalist and her ex-boyfriend, who helps her heal after a 15-year old boy stabs her son, Tunmininu.
Yishau, perhaps, wants his readers to identify with the dramatic conundrums of modern societies and how the individual is in constant need of coping mechanisms.
Yishau also attempts to re-envision the misperception often attributed to racism. This is evidenced through the character of the 15-year-old boy who stabs Idera’s son.
Idera first considers this to be a result of racism but you later discover that the boy is also Black and that the reason he charged at Idera’s son, Tunmininu, is premised on how receptive and kind he is. He stabs Tunmininu because he is not cold to him like the other boys.
Yishau paints the picture of ostracism, an element of racism, differently. He brings to mind the supposition that one can be ostracised for being behaviourally different. At first, readers are positioned to construe the attack on Idera’s son as a result of racism but you soon realise that it is a result of the familial dysfunction that reverberates through modern societies. Yishau enlivens how a child becomes easily influenced by a society that is already disgruntled, disjointed and disfigured.
Through the character of Justus Kensington, Yishau reveals the homesickness that strikes Nigerians once they emigrate from their country. He depicts the unconscious obsession or fascination that Lagosians have towards the city. Here, Yishau carves the portraiture of the Lagosian’s mind: the chaos that allures them also pushes them away.
You can simply say that Demola is two-faced but Yishau does not leave us with a surface description of his two-facedness.
He perforates the fogginess in the novel’s mystery and lets you see through the psychological factors responsible for the type of man that Demola becomes.
Demola’s infidelity is reminiscent of his father’s but Demola does not entirely become his father; instead, he transcends his father as he cares doubly and almost equally for Lydia and Idera, keeping them in separate worlds where he is like a wall erected between them.
What awaits readers of/in After the End is a world that is convincingly magnetic in its thematic and storytelling pull as well as its non-euphemistic representation of circumstances that pervade the individual’s life; a non-euphemistic presentation that reads, at times, like nonfiction. Perhaps this is due to the polymathic quality of Yishau’s experience as a journalist.
–Oso is a postgraduate student at the Department of English, University of Lagos.
