This Kind of Trouble - Hardcover

Eze, Tochi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593475100 ISBN 13: 9780593475102

Verlag: Tiny Reparations Books, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A riveting tale of forbidden love centered on an estranged couple brought together to reckon with the mysterious events that splintered their family.

In 1960s Lagos, a city enlivened with its newfound independence, headstrong Margaret meets British-born Benjamin, a man seeking his roots after the death of his half-Nigerian father. Despite Margaret’s reluctance, their connection is immediate. They fall in love in the dense, humid city, examining what appears to be their racial and cultural differences. However, as they exchange childhood stories during lazy work lunches, they uncover a past more entangled than they could have ever imagined. Margaret’s deteriorating mental health combined with the shadow of events that transpired decades ago in a small village sets their gradual fracture in motion.

By 2005, Margaret has retired to an upscale gated community in Lagos, and seemingly happy Benjamin lives alone in Atlanta, managing his heart problems with no options when asked to name his next of kin. But their attempt at a settled life is shattered when their grandson begins to show ominous signs echoing the struggles Margaret once faced. The former lovers are forced to reunite to confront the buried secrets they had dismissed in the passion of their youth—secrets that continue to ripple through their family.

A startling and propulsive tale of forbidden love, This Kind of Trouble traces the intertwined legacies of one family’s history, exploring the complex relationship between tradition, modernity, and the ways we seek healing in a changing world. With this debut novel, Tochi Eze announces herself as a dazzling new voice in world literature.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tochi Eze is a writer and lawyer from Nigeria., Longreads named her short story “The Americanization of Kambili,” published by Catapult, as one of “Ten Outstanding Stories to Read in 2023.” She has an MFA from Florida Atlantic University and is currently a PhD student in English Literature at the University of Virginia.

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1


Benjamin


Atlanta, 2005


Benjamin sat across from the bank officer; there was a small square window inches below the ceiling so that the afternoon sunrays slanted through the opening and fell on his face. The room reminded him of his own office in Ikoyi; the humidity, the feeling of old leather against his back, the smell of tobacco that filtered in from the entrance, as though time had frozen into a capsule. It occurred to him-while the bank officer sifted through his files-that a man should be entitled to the troubles of his making; no more, no less. Yet, it seemed his own troubles began with his father. The poor chap had been born into a quarrel that made him an orphan. And if not his father, then who? Perhaps it began with Benjamin himself those forty or so years ago when he'd moved to Lagos, that city damp with heat, aflame with postindependence ambition, unconscious of its chaos. No. He shook off the thought before it could settle. There was something else. Someone else. The conclusion was both familiar and inevitable, for his troubles, indeed, began with Margaret.

Of course his nostalgia could have been the effect of the phone call from the night before. He'd woken up this morning and wondered if he'd dreamed it-if her voice, after these many years, could have stayed the same. He was not a sentimental man. Even in the old days, he had not given himself to the usual productions of romance-flowers, walking a woman to the salon, complimenting her dress and shoes, her nails, those long cosmetic talons. It was not his style. He'd loved his women the way his father had told him to: like a bird, one had to hover and watch; affection was a matter of practicality.

The bank officer was forty-two years old, named Mark Troshinsky, after his Russian grandfather. His patrilineal family had moved to the United States in 1952; they were veterans, having fought in the Vietnam War. They bled for this country, the bank officer said, his eyes falling briefly on the small American flag on his desk. Last year, the bank officer continued, he'd had a health scare; he did not say what it was, and Benjamin did not ask. After the scare, he was thinking about early retirement. He wanted to spend time on the important things, he'd said. Benjamin nodded to indicate that he was listening, but his mind was now fully turned to Margaret. You must know what you are getting into, Benjamin's father had told him. However, as Benjamin would learn, there comes a time when a father's advice is cast away and the heart devises its own reasons. And when that time came for Benjamin, he followed an old cliché and fell for the great love of his life. Now he shifted slightly on his seat, an attempt to pull himself back to the present, to the bank officer's words. If it was a different day, if his mind was not crowded by the events of yesterday-by that phone call-Benjamin would have said something to the banker about the illusion of retirement. He knew firsthand that the only true retirement was death, and that the absence of work did not mean the absence of anxieties, both old and new.

The bank officer had been to Europe, Thailand, and, more recently, Brazil-an avid traveler, proud of his worldliness. He pulled out a picture from the wallet in his breast pocket and showed Benjamin-the banker standing with two tanned teenagers, his daughters Benjamin presumed, all three of them draped with red and black shawls. Benjamin smiled at the picture and asked about a painting that hung across his desk, performing, in his own way, that polite American curiosity. When Benjamin had first moved to the United States, he thought it absurd that he could learn intimate details of people's lives so casually-in train and bus stations. He still found it affecting that Americans could be so open and friendly yet stubbornly private, generous with their stories but highly suspicious of any interest in their affairs. He smiled at the banker, then decided to offer his own gesture of a life. He shared how he, too, had traveled quite a bit, that he was originally from England, where he had his early education, that he had lived in Nigeria, and Ghana, then gone back to London before moving to the United States to attend graduate school.

"I have always wanted to go to Africa," the bank officer said. He opened his drawer to pull out stacks of paper, spreading three pages on the polished desk.

"Is that right?" Benjamin replied. "I myself am Nigerian," he added after a pause.

"I see-" the bank officer said, eyeing Benjamin. There was silence. Papers shuffled. A nudge to Benjamin to sign documents. Then the bank officer warmed up again as he put the papers away.

"I suppose if we dig far enough, we'd all find a little of Africa in us," the officer said, smiling.

Benjamin had come to enjoy watching the surprise, then confusion on people's faces whenever he said that he was Nigerian. His skin was the same pale pigment of most white men, his hazel eyes tinted toward green when he stood in the sun. It was a confusion that he, too, had carried as a boy. His father's skin had been light enough, and so Benjamin had never questioned how much paler his mother was when she stood next to his father, or the way his father's hair coiled around his head. Benjamin was nine years old when he learned about the difference between his father and mother, and he'd only discovered it when one of the boys in his catechism class asked, "How is it that your mother married a negro?" Benjamin had not said anything in response, but later that night, just before dinner, he'd stood beside his father, rolled up his dust-stained sleeves, then placed his hand against his old man's. It was the first time he saw the contrast, shocked that all this time he'd never noticed.

"You are dark," Benjamin said to his father. Not a question, a simple acknowledgment.

"It appears so," his father answered, then continued simply, "Go clean up before your mother's cooking grows cold."

***

Benjamin left the bank wishing he could have a cigarette, but he had not smoked in twelve years. He stood under the blue awning and watched a bird perch on a tree. His mind again returned to the events of yesterday-the call. It was a simple exchange, no longer than five seconds. Maybe six. But it was enough to send him back to Lagos, the city and the people he once called home. His father’s connection to a small Nigerian village was almost mythical, a strange family story Benjamin often recounted to pretty women in his university days. But where his father’s myth ended, his own life began. He’d had it all-a home. A wife. A child. His own child. Benjamin had two other marriages after that time in Nigeria, neither of which resulted in children. He had even, out of pity, entertained accusations of impotency by his second wife and their family clinician, a small weight to carry because Benjamin knew it to be undeniably false; he was capable of fatherhood, if only in a biological sense. It is true that he’d left Margaret, left his child, left the country-but leaving was not a crime. If there was one thing that he had learned as a man, it was this: all commitments are negotiable-with two legs and a good enough reason, one could always find the door. He told himself year after year that there’d been no other choice, that he’d had to remove himself from that specific situation as one might crawl out from under the weight of a stone pressing down on one’s neck. Leaving was a game of survival, and he, Benjamin Fletcher, was good at surviving. He’d survived cancer at forty-seven, a motorbike accident at fifty-nine, a heart attack at sixty-one. Now, at sixty-seven, it seemed like the only demand life threw at him was to survive the consequences of the past.



2


The Kinsmen


Umumilo,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Tiny Reparations Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593475100
• ISBN 13: 9780593475102
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 308
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar