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    The Thing Around Your Neck
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    The Thing Around Your Neck
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    The Thing Around Your Neck
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Thing Around Your Neck

    Written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Narrated by Adjoa Andoh

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Winner of a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and an Orange Prize for Fiction, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie continues the literary tradition of Chinua Achebe, one of her greatest influences, in this brilliant collection of stories. Focusing on life’s many clashes—tradition with modernity, African cultures with American—Adichie delivers a series of haunting, character-driven tales.
    “Adichie’s graceful and slicing stories … beautifully capture the immense resonance of small things as the larger world pitches into incoherence.”—Booklist
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books Audio
    Release dateMay 27, 2010
    ISBN9781449814571
    Unavailable
    The Thing Around Your Neck
    Author

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of Purple Hibiscus, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction; and acclaimed story collection The Thing Around Your Neck. Americanah, was published around the world in 2013, received numerous awards and was named one of New York Times Ten Books of the Year. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

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    Reviews for The Thing Around Your Neck

    4/5

    383 ratings38 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Wonderful. A various and cohesive set of stories laying out the universal through the specific (in this case, Nigeria of the last few generations). Worth it for the use of second-person alone.
    • 5/5
      Woow..... wat een schrijfster.... en normaal houd ik niet zo van korte verhalen.... je moet dan te vaak een duik nemen in een ander verhaal; veelal voordat je goed en wel aan het "zwemmen" bent in het korte verhaal waar je aan bezig bent. Maar de kracht waarmee Adichie schrijft overstijgt dit... in plaats van je te laten "zwemmen" zoals in haar "romans" .... laat ze je hier "duiken" .... ze plonst je in het diepe... betovert je voor een ongenblik.. en laat je dan het water van je afschuddend bovenkomen. Een echte aanrader....
    • 5/5
      Adichie has been called the heir to Chinua Achebe, and these short stories are more evidence of her extraordinary talent. Each story relates to the general theme of displacement and personal change. What makes the stories special, (and surprising, given her previous works were novels), is her mastery of the short story form. Each story creates complete, rounded characters who grow and change and a plot which holds the attention up to the end. The endings feel satisfyingly complete and yet leave one pondering long afterwards. Great stuff.
    • 5/5
      Adichie's short prose is quick and colorful despite its often heavy subject matter. Her unexpected second-person narration wavers between effectively engaging and a little too gimmicky -- I never made it all the way into being the "You" telling the story. Nevertheless, the collection of stories effortlessly bridges the divide between the majority American experience, and the liminal, precarious existence of African immigrants in this country -- especially those people who don't fall neatly into an economic/class bracket.
    • 4/5
      This collection of short stories is my first exposure to Adichie and I will definitely be going back for more. I listened to the audio version but did not listen to it straight through. Many of the stories had a similar theme of women being oppressed by oppressive men who don't consider what the woman wants for her own life. If they had been split up into other collections or in a different order in this book, it might have worked better for me. I ended up listening to one or two stories and then listening or reading something else to break them up.However, I loved the book. Cell, A Private Experience and Jumping Monday Hill stuck in my mind more than some the others, but they were all engaging.
    • 4/5
      Adichie is one of my favorite authors; she has quite the gift of creating poignant characters and situations without becoming maudlin. I prefer her novels over this collection of short stories, though, simply because about halfway through the collection the trope of strong-independent-woman in love with an overbearing man became a bit repetitive. If you read one or two stories, it's glorious; more than that, you might get the wrong impression of Adichie. Two stories I did not care for, and those were the ones written in second person point of view ("you did this, you knew him from..."). I look forward to Adichie's next novel.
    • 5/5
      These stories keep breaking my heart-- in the very best way. I will certainly be using these stories in my classes from here on out.
    • 4/5
      I (seem to) recollect that others have commented that there's a sense of 'incompletion' to some of these short stories about the experience of being a women in Nigerian culture (in Nigeria and the USA). But to my mind that is the essence of a short story, it is neither the start or the end of a 'tale', but simply a window into the world the author has created (or reflected) that can only hint at what went before or came after. Nothing in life is complete, and the short story form truly reflects that. All that said, these are engaging (and sometimes disturbing) stories that take the reader somewhere unexpected and confirmed my intuition that West African literature has a lot to tell us about somewhere unfamiliar, and about some very familiar themes about being human.
    • 4/5
      As one of the apparently rare few who wasn't blown away by Half of a Yellow Sun, I took a gamble on Adichie's short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck--and I'm very glad that I did. These twelve stories all feature Nigerian protagonists, but the settings, time periods, and situations shift from the 1967 Biafran war, to immigrants in the contemporary United States, back to a time when white missionaries were still a rare sight in Nigeria. Many of the stories deal with women struggling to balance between the old ways and the new, but Adichie also focuses on Nigeria's brutal politics, history of violence, divisive class system, and exploitation by the west. But behind those messages are real characters--real people--working hard at relationships and trying to make tomorrow just a little better than today. Adichie's writing itself is engaging and compelling, and the stories have encouraged me to seek pout her other novels. Perhaps even to give Half of a Yellow Sun another try.
    • 3/5
      An interesting enough set of short stories. But they read like an exercise in creative writing. A writer with a Nigerian background compiles a list of typical Nigerian settings, culled as much from newspaper clippings as experience, puts in some wafer thin characters and away you go. 'Jumping Monkey Hill' tells of a group of young writers from different countries in Africa assembled by a British teacher for a workshop. This book could be a product of that workshop. The tone of voice, though reflecting Nigeria, is from Europe. It has the feel of an outsider writing about things she's read but not experienced. Things she ought to know more about but doesn't. A product of modern multiculturalism and not bad for that.
    • 2/5
      I didn't enjoy this collection of short stories as much as I had hoped. I love tales from Africa, especially Nigeria, which is a country so full of literary possibilities that it's hard to know where to start. However, I found a lot of Adichie's stories to be too choked. They suffer from a writing style that I think is unnecessarily heavy; at times the writing, and the structure of the story, get in the way of the tale. The worst example is what could otherwise have been a very dramatic and moving tale of a woman trying to escape the country, and who whilst queueing for the embassy recalls the events of the last few days. It didn't work as well as it should have done. A much better story, told more linearly and with a freshness not present in much of the rest, is the opening tale of a young man arrested on suspicion of being part of a gang. The prose is so much more direct and powerful, and the political commentary more oblique. The story that concerns a writers' group in South Africa is too clearly political, the characters simply one-dimension puppets made to regurgitate political speeches, and reading their diatribes one after another is simply exhausting.
    • 4/5
      Cell One: 4/5 stars. An interesting little story about cults taking over a town. The narrator's brother gets into some trouble and ends up in jail. Adichie's writing is fluid and lovely to read, and I also liked the side story of the old man locked up instead of his son.

      Imitation: 4/5 stars. This one was interesting. Once again, Adichie's writing style makes the story a pleasure to read. Imitation focuses on a Nigerian woman living in America. She has just discovered that her husband has another woman back in Nigeria. It was an interesting look at relationships.

      A Private Experience: 5/5 stars. I really liked this one. It follows two women hiding out during a riot. The two women are very different and it's interesting watching them interact with each other. Parts of this one were a bit unsettling but this only added to the atmosphere and showed the grim reality of religious rioting.

      Ghosts: 2/5 stars. I did not really enjoy this one. It was a bit boring and rambled a lot. There wasn't really much of a story and it did not hold my interest.

      On Monday of Last Week: 4/5 stars. I liked this one. It's the story of a Nigerian woman working as a childminder for an odd couple. The woman has been quite depressed since she moved there. ''On Monday of Last Week'' something happens which changes her mood and we watch the woman attempt to make sense of the situation.

      Jumping Monkey Hill : 2/5 stars. I didn't really like this one. There didn't really seem to be much of a story. It was following a woman at a writing workshop but nothing really happened. This one was not very impressive or interesting.

      The Thing Around Your Neck: 5/5 stars. I absolutely loved this one. It's a short love story about a Nigerian woman in a relationship with a wealthy man she meets in America. Her struggle to adjust to his way of life was interesting and the ending was quite sad.

      The American Embassy: 4/5 stars. I liked this one a lot. It's a snapshot of time of a woman waiting in line to apply for asylum in America. Her son has just died and her husband has fled. I did find the ending a bit abrupt, though.

      The Shivering 3/5 stars. This one was okay. It started off good and was very intriguing. A girl was waiting to find out if her boyfriend had been killed in a plane crash. However, as the story went on, I felt it lost focus a bit and was a bit all over the place.

      The Arrangers of Marriages: 5/5 stars. This one was really good. It tells the story of an arranged marriage of an African couple living in America. I found it heartbreaking to read about all the parts of her culture that she had to get rid of in order to ''fit in'' there. An interesting story with a strong, likable heroine.

      Tomorrow is Too Far 4/5 stars. This was good enough. A quick story about a girl reflecting on her brother's death and the real story behind it. I felt it was a bit rushed and could have been slowed down slightly but other than that, it was enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      I heard the title story of this collection on NPR's "Selected Shorts" podcast, and the actor who read it was amazing. Just wonderful. The drawback to this is that once you've had a story read aloud to you, it's not going to be as amazing or wonderful when you read it to yourself. Still, short stories = great beach book. It's easy to put down, and easier to pick back up.
    • 5/5
      A masterful storyteller. Her descriptions of Africa are very vivid - I could close my eyes and imagine being right there. The sense of deep emotions were present in many stories even though the subject matter differed widely. I loved the sense of bewilderment and misunderstanding she created in some of the stories. A great collection of short stories. I'll be looking for more of her work.
    • 5/5
      Wonderfully moving stories
    • 5/5
      The Thing Around Your Neck This was an amazing collection, each story focusing on a different part of life, each one entirely different from the last, and each one completely amazing.
      There are a lot of reasons why these stories were each amazing and beautiful. For starters, they are #ownvoices, which in itself lends depth to them that is hard to come by from people not familiar with others experiences, but the stories are also varied in many other ways.
      I remember first hearing about Adichie from her TEDtalk, the Danger of a Single Story, so I knew not to expect the stories to be similar to each other or to any idea that I had about Africa or African people. Each one is a different part of life for African people. I know that several stories were about Nigerians specifically, but not whether all were. I know Adichie is Nigerian (yes, I even looked up her Wikipedia page to double check), but I don't want to make either assumption that it means all her characters must be Nigerian nor that the experience of people from different countries within Africa are interchangeable. Instead, I'll just point out that I don't know. I do know that one story pointed out where secondary characters were from and the protagonist even refers to them by their country more than their name as they are all new to her.
      Getting back to the way the stories were varied, some were immigration stories to the US and others took place in Africa, but even one of those could be loosely categorized as an immigration story because it is about a woman attempting to obtain refugee status to go to the US. It would be difficult to judge the stories against each other on a level of enjoyable as not all are happy or sad, but they all make the reader think about their ideas of how they treat people and how they are treated by people.
      I was glad that I listened to the audiobook, read by Adjoa Andoh, because of the character names. Not only would I have mispronounced, but I would have missed out on the lyrical beauty of many of them. The many accents required to read through all the stories were masterfully done as one should expect from an actress of Andoh's accomplishments.
      Altogether, it's an enlightening set of stories that should definitely be read by anyone interested in stories about the lives of women. This does not mean that it should be relegated to "chick lit", though. None of the stories are delivered in the "humorously and lightedhardly" style of what is often referred to as chick lit. These are serious stories about women's lives, the struggles, the many forms that heartbreak takes, the difficult decisions that must be contended with. While I wouldn't use the book alone to indicate what African or Nigerian culture is completely about (then we'd fall into the narrow view that Adichie herself cautions against), I would say that it paints an interesting picture of what it is like for some women.
      So again, an excellent pick for anyone interested in women's stories, particularly those looking to expand their reading to include stories in more than one country, of moving between countries, of the way lives mix between people of different cultures in several ways. The collection on its own, it still expands the idea of what African stories are and takes us a beyond a single story.
    • 4/5
      God, I love this woman.
    • 4/5
      A varied and smart set of stories. Some highlights:The Headstrong Historian: a rewriting of history from the perspective of a Nigerian woman, leaping ahead to her granddaughter, who rewrites the history of her people. Jumping Monkey Hill: hilarious but sad story about an African writers' centre, which is founded, funded, and dominated by its European director. Tomorrow is Too Far: a suspenseful story of a woman's role in the childhood death of her brother. On Monday of Last Week: a nanny's flirtation with the mother of her young charge. The American Embassy: tells the story of a woman whose journalist husband is under threat by the Nigerian government. She tries to get herself and her son out of the country to join him. I think most of these stories ask questions about what it is to live ethically: what is bravery, responsibility, love, truth?
    • 5/5
      I love this author! This is a great collection of short stories, portraying Nigerian characters in their conflict with Western culture. Adichie has a beautiful fresh and sharp writing style, keeping you interested. Great books for anyone who is an immigrant or is interested in immigrant's issues (and not only)! I loved her 'Purple Hibiscus', and plan to read "Half of a Yellow Sun'. Beautiful writing!
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this short story collection almost as much as Half of a Yellow Sun. In most of the stories, it's about Nigerian-Americans, each told with a fresh perspective and about a different subject-matter. Stories range from the "cults" (gangs) in Nigeria to infidelity in America. Adichie doesn't confine herself to a certain story-type. Ehe adds a lot of irony and at the end of a lot of the short stories you won't know whether to laugh or cry. She writes beautifully and certainly doesn't disappoint with her latest.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting collection of short stories. They all have a link to Nigeria, but they are not all set there; some are, others are US based. It deals with the relationships between people, families, the things we say and the secrets we keep. They have African names and the accent is unfamiliar, but the stories could be set anywhere based on the people encountered. The stories have either a female narrator or a female as the prime mover in the story, and that seems to reflect well in the way that it is the women who hold he place together, the women who queue and worry and sit at the heart of the family (or not, as the case may be). There is a real mixture in here of distant past, immediate past and preset. A mixture of real deep country and US immigrant. And they are not even all in the same style. Its a really varied and good selection from an author with something to say about all of us.I listened to this and the narrator made the stories come very much to life, accenting the different characters differently, bit not, to my ear, straying into caricature.
    • 4/5
      A fine collection of stories which confirms Adichie is equally adept at short fiction as at the novel. Most of these stories are set in modern times, largely among Nigerian emigres in America. She can tackle serious and humorous subjects with the same light touch and apparently effortless storytelling.
    • 5/5
      This is a superb collection of short stories by the Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Each story offers different perspectives: the African experience, life as a woman, the clash of cultures (African/Western, religions).
      Adichie is a very good author.
      This book is fantastic.
    • 5/5
      Great stories, giving a feel for the culture gap between educated Nigerians and the U.S. All with female central character, gives insight there too. The writing is fluent and vivid with much sensuous texture. Enhanced further by the reading brilliantly 'read' by Adjoa Andoh, including a dozen different Nigerian regional accents, 3 pain-in-the-ass American kids and an Irish priest.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful collection of stories.This was a poweful collection of short stories with the general theme of Nigeria and Nigerians.The stories include interaction between Africans and Whites, integrating with other cultures, Nigerian history, the problems women face under the rule of men and other cultural aspects that make the lives of Africans so different from inhabitants of much of the West.Having loved Purple Hibiscus but ground to a halt in the middle of Half of a Yellow Sun, I was thrilled to have the chance to read another of Adichie's books. It did not disappoint.I particularly liked the female slant on the tales and the strong female characters. All in all a very satisfying read and definitely recommended.
    • 3/5
      This is a collection of stories, some of which have been collected online in such publications as the Granta, new Yorker, etc. They are as interesting as they were the first time and the few new ones too. I however think that some of them lack a certain dept and are very easy to forget once you have closed the page.
    • 5/5
      A wonderful collection of short stories; read a couple of them before in Granta and somewhere else, but wonderful to read again. She has become one of my favourites.
    • 5/5
      The first few stories in this collection, somehow, rather bled together and didn't leave much of an impression, but about a third of the way into the work--with the fifth story--Adichie's work simply came to life. I'm not sure whether it was the stories themselves, or whether those early ones served as something of a build-up to the later power that came through in her writing, but with "On Monday of Last Week" and the stories that followed, I found myself transported entirely by her language, as has happened (in my experience, at least) with her novels. From moment to moment, I was fully wrapped up in her stories, her characters, and her language, and so engaged that each story felt like a novel in itself, wholly captured.So, yes, I would absolutely recommend this collection. The stories are varied and beautiful, and what I'll simply say is that readers who are left somewhat less than enchanted by earlier stories should keep reading. What comes is worth every moment, every word.
    • 5/5
      Adichie's characters, and especially the women, are often brutally honest, even as they struggle with their lives. This is the thing around your neck, of the title, I believe. Favorite stories in this collection are Cell One, A Private Experience, the Headstrong Historian, and, of course, the Thing Around Your Neck.

    • 4/5
      Beautiful, beautiful stories.