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Summary
Summary
Ifi and Job, a Nigerian couple in an arranged marriage, begin their lives together in Nebraska with a single, outrageous lie: that Job is a doctor, not a college dropout. Unwittingly, Ifi becomes his co-conspirator--that is until his first wife, Cheryl, whom he married for a green card years ago, reenters the picture and upsets Job's tenuous balancing act.
Julie Iromuanya has short stories and novel excerpts appearing or forthcoming in the Kenyon Review , Passages North , the Cream City Review , and the Tampa Review , among other journals. She is a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Mr. and Mrs. Doctor is her first novel.
Author Notes
Julie Iromuanya is the author of Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press), a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature (now 9 Mobile Prize for Literature), and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for Debut Fiction. Her scholarly-critical work most recently appears in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism and is forthcoming in Callaloo: A Journal of African American Arts and Letters and Afropolitan Literature as World Literature (Bloomsbury Publishing). She was the inaugural Herbert W. Martin Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dayton. She has also been a Jane Tinkham Broughton Fellow in Fiction at Bread Loaf Writers Conference, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference, a Bread Loaf Bakeless/Camargo France Fellow, a Brown Foundation Fellow at the Dora Maar House, a Jan Michalski Fellow at "The Treehouses," and the Eternal Vada Fellow at Sangam House. Her work has also been supported by fellowships and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, Villa Lena, and Villa Ruffieux. Iromuanya earned her B.A. at the University of Central Florida and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she was a Presidential Fellow and award-winning teacher. She is an assistant professor in the creative writing MFA program at the University of Arizona. She is at work on a second novel, A Season of Light.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Iromuanya's debut novel opens during the awkward wedding night in Nigeria between arranged couple Job and Ifi Ogbonnaya. Although naturally wary of her new mate, Ifi believes her husband is a successful, wealthy doctor in America, but he's actually a nurse's assistant who failed out of the University of Nebraska. Ifi is also unaware that Job married a twice-divorced American named Cheryl in exchange for a green card years earlier, and then divorced her before marrying Ifi. Financially challenged Cheryl resurfaces before Ifi arrives in her new home, asking for funds. The crux of Iromuanya's world lies in Job's vast capacity for continued delusions of grandeur. No matter how dire the circumstances, Job manages to find a way to manufacture superiority: "The more he spoke, the bigger the promises, the larger he felt." Iromuanya skillfully explores the cultural challenges Job and Ifi encounter within their Nebraska community, rendering a complex, rich portrait of their lives. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Newlywed Nigerian expats in America attempt to cement their careers and social standing as an ex's return threatens the life they're building. Job Ogbonnaya has returned to his Nigerian homeland for an arranged marriage with Ifi, who has been seduced by Job's reputation as a big doctor in America. Job has also promised to send Ifi to an American university to study nursing. But after a rocky beginning in which Ifi is repulsed by Job's rough sexual advanceseverything Job "knew about sex he learned from American pornography"things only get worse. Job isn't a doctor with a fancy house; he's a nurse's aide living in a run-down walk-up. With one year left on his student visa, he dropped out of college; his American citizenship is the result of a green-card marriage to a twice-divorced woman from Nebraska. And when Ifi learns the truth about Job from his scheming ex-wife, Iromuanya embarks on a masterful exploration of the interplay of desire, loyalty, and ambition. Ifi has no desire to admit Job's failure to the world and lose the respect of her Nigerian community back home, but Job has no desire to make good on his ongoing promises of medical school and a better life in America. And so the masquerade continues, the clock counting down on just how long Job and Ifi's charade can last. This refreshingly well-drawn debut novel is peopled with lively, engrossing characters who reflect a sophisticated understanding of human nature and relationships. Against a backdrop of the micro- and macroaggressions African expats endure in the West, Iromuanya presents a fascinating and often hilarious drama of marriage, highlighting the discrepancies between who we say we are and who we really are. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
Job, a Nigerian immigrant to Nebraska and Iromuanya's "Mr. Doctor," is fond of saying, scornfully, "Only in America," a sweeping judgment of the shamelessness of his adopted country. But it's Job's own mix of shamelessness and shame that sets the events of Iromuanya's novel in motion. Unable to admit to his parents back home that he has flunked out of college and taken a job as a nursing assistant, he tells them he's going to medical school and becoming a doctor. As time passes, the lie becomes a black hole into which everyone's dreams are sucked: Job's family is impoverished after years of sending tuition checks, and Ifi, "Mrs. Doctor," who arrives in Omaha after an arranged marriage to Job, sees her hopes collapse as well. Iromuanya tackles many subjects - marriage, race, immigration, families - and her grasp occasionally loosens. But the interplay between Job's rigid and secretive bluster and Ifi's attempt to build a new American life never loses its poignancy. At one point, having learned that his bad credit will prevent them from renting a new apartment, Job tries to reassure Ifi that "everything is okie," but "the deep recesses in his forehead told her that something had gone terribly wrong."
