When Obiefuna’s father sees a brief, intimate moment between his teenage son and a boy apprenticed to the family, Obiefuna is sent away to a strict religious boarding school. Torn from his mother Uzoamaka’s side, with whom he has a close and loving relationship, and cast into a world of tough boys, each trying to survive in their own way, Obiefuna has no choice but to grow up fast, all the while learning more about who he is and what he wants. Blessings is a coming-of-age story of a gentle, sensitive soul in several environments, each hostile to him in their own way. The golden child, the firstborn son, he has a happy early childhood until a growing inability to fit in with his male peers lowers him in his father’s eyes, creating a rift in their relationship. In the boarding school, life under strict routine, and cruel and unpredictable schoolboy rules, leaves its mark on him, as he is torn between fitting in, and expressing himself freely. As a young adult, he is finally finding his footing and place in the world just as there is a growing crackdown across Nigeria on same-sex relationships, or anyone suspected of being in one. Through each stage we see him navigating friendships and relationships, learning and growing. 

Alternating between Obiefuna and his mother’s perspectives, this is a tender, moving and beautifully written debut looking at identity, masculinity, self-discovery, sexuality and desire, and how to live when we need to mask our true selves; at love, loneliness and the power of human connection when we most need it; at questions of religion and faith; and the struggles within families, between parents, when a child doesn’t fit in. While Obiefuna is the main protagonist, his mother’s storyline lends its own strength to the story, as we see her dealing with his absence and confronting the silences within her household, the social and political unrest around her, and considering her relationship with the men in her own family, as well as the situation in Nigeria for young men. Despite the bullying, oppression and violence within the story, there is also a lot of quiet tenderness, and there are many invaluable moments of connection, exploring the way people can hold each other up, and also the way people can seek to make amends where they let others down. A powerful yet sensitively written story, and a striking debut.

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Blessings is published by Viking on February 22nd. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC.

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Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a writer from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, born in 2000. His writing has appeared in McSweeneys, The New England Review of Books and Lolwe, amongst others, and he is a staff writer at Brittle Paper. He was the Runner-up for the 2021 J.F Powers Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and Morland Foundation Scholarship and was profiled as one of the “Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction” in Electric Literature. He has studied creative writing under Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers and Tash Aw. He is a student on a fully funded MFA programme at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, until 2024.