Someday, Maybe

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If you are someone who gravitates toward emotional gut punch reads, allow me to introduce you to this spectacular debut…”— BuzzFeed Someday, Maybe is a stunning, witty debut novel about a young woman’s emotional journey through unimaginable loss, pulled along by her tight-knit Nigerian family, a posse of friends, and the love and laughter she shared with her husband.

Grief piled upon staggering grief. It almost hurt to read this book at times, and every time I pushed through the discomfort I was rewarded with more gorgeous writing and the love poured forth by Eve’s Nigerian family. Suicide and death itself aren’t the happiest of reading topics, but I have found myself drawn to them this year ~ perhaps as I age I find myself more curious about mortality and how others deal with crushing losses because I’m more and more aware that one is potentially just around the corner for every one of us? I loved reading about Eve’s collapse and the cushion her family provided because I believe that’s what we all deserve ~ a soft place to land when the world falls apart. Her grief felt raw and real and she let herself feel despite social conventions. I’ll be thinking about Someday, Maybe for a long, long time. NOTE: This book will certainly not be for everyone, and please take care or avoid if suicide or the death of a spouse is too tough to read about. It was one of the things I could never wrap my head around. He was never content with “okay”. He was in search of a luminescent joy. I thought he had found it. I was wrong.” After her husband's unexpected death, everyone around Eve – her friends, her stifling Nigerian-British family, her toxic mother-in-law – is pushing her to move on. But Eve isn't ready to face the future yet. No, she intends to take to her bed like a consumptive Victorian lady, ignoring her mother's earnest prayers and her sister's cajoling.When someone you love dies, there’s this period of disbelief — a time of dug-in heels, the refusal to process your new reality. A preamble to real Denial, which brings its falsehoods and proclamations of It’s not true and Not you, girl. Someone else. It’s so much more than a book about loss. It’s an exploration of the pure love of family, the bonds of friendship, the power of letting others into your circle, and the pain and stress of fractured relationships within extended family.

In her grieving, she is beginning to realise that all people want from her is to get better. It is to be happier, to stop crying but the type of pain she feels is not just the one of loss but one burdened by self-hate, self-blame and fear. The reminders was constant, no matter the amount of delicious Nigerian food her worried mother made, no matter the amount of cuddles she got from her amazing nieces and nephews, no matter the amount of time she spent with her stable brother (who by the way I have a crush on), "There is no reminder of pain as poignant as the physical manifestation of it over the place your heart resides". I can understand this, as someone who has had a close friend kill herself, I can tell you that the guilt, What did I do? Why didn't I see it? But she was happy, wasn't she?, could I have done something? was it my fault? was my presence in her life not enough for her to wish to see me again? was I truly despicable that she chose death over me? Should I have never met her? Should I have dated her when she asked me? - These are some of the questions I continue to ask myself. My friend who was in so much pain must have forgotten that "... your life is never completely your own when you have people who love you". As one can imagine, it's an emotional journey for Eve as she struggles to process everything. It is a raw and brutal look at someone overcome with grief. Given the content, it can be a lot for a reader to digest so you might want to consider if you are in the right headspace for a book of this nature. I found it to be a book of great value and one of the best works of fiction I've read dealing with the subject.In the film Run Lola Run — one of Q’s favorites and eventually one of mine — Lola, the red-haired heroine, sprints through the streets of Berlin in a bid to procure an obscene amount of money to save her hapless boyfriend, Manni. She runs because she has only twenty minutes to secure the cash. During her mad dash to save a man whom, frankly, she might have been better off leaving to perish, she bumps into strangers along the way. The best thing about this film and one of the reasons Q fell in love with it is that we, the viewer, are shown flash-forward sequences depicting the futures of those Lola meets. We are privy to the consequences of Lola’s fleeting interactions with these people and they are often lovely or sad. It’s a wonderful thing to watch and watch it we did, repeatedly, never tiring of Franka Potente’s questionable late-90s fashion or the way we felt when the credits began to roll: spent, like we had done the running ourselves, but also sort of grateful.