Kavita agreed to let Mary take Vivek to her church, but the pastor tried to perform an exorcism, and Kavita stopped speaking to Mary. Osita and Vivek had an argument when Osita was insulted by Vivek’s suggestion that he might be attracted to men. Vivek had stopped cutting his hair and lost weight. Later, he heard Vivek had left university and saw him during a family visit to Ahunna’s old village house. In another first-person narration, Vivek says he liked the spelling of “beautyful.”Īs narrator, Osita explains that he avoided Vivek and Elizabeth after the incident at Vivek’s parents’ house. In the process, Osita opened Vivek’s copy of The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Kavita asked Osita to help search Vivek’s room for a charm of Vivek’s that was missing.

The third-person narrator describes Osita’s days after Vivek died, when he drank to excess. In a first-person narration, Vivek remarks that he was never what anyone thought he was. Vivek told Osita he wanted to watch them have sex from the window, but instead appeared in the doorway while experiencing a blackout, scaring Elizabeth. Eventually, Elizabeth became Osita’s girlfriend, and they had sex at Vivek’s house. Osita describes how Vivek had mysterious blackout episodes. Vivek and Osita met other children through this group, including Elizabeth, a girl Osita liked. Kavita belonged to a group called the Nigerwives, which consisted of foreign women married to Nigerians. Their mothers enrolled them in SAT prep classes together. In a first-person narration, Osita recalls growing up with Vivek. He had been born on the same day that Ahunna had died. Vivek had been born with a starfish marking on his foot similar to Ahunna’s scar.

Kavita found Vivek’s body on the veranda and he appeared to have been killed. The market was past the junction where Ebenezer, a vulcanizer, worked. The novel shows their child, Vivek, 20 years in the future, trying on Kavita’s gold jewelry in the company of his cousin Osita, Mary and Ekene’s son. Chika later married Kavita, the niece of the doctor at his workplace. Chika made a pass at Mary, his brother Ekene’s wife.

Chika’s mother, Ahunna, injured her foot one day and developed a starfish-shaped scar. The narration introduces Vivek’s father, Chika, when he was 20 years old. Riverhead Books, 2020.Įmezi’s novel opens with a declaration that an unspecified “They” (1) burned the market down on the day Vivek Oji died. The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Emezi, Akwaeke.

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