User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
We all be speaking different because we all are having different growing-up life, but we can all be understanding each other if we just take the time to listen well.
What a great story.
The Girl with the Louding Voice really lived up to the hype, in my opinion. One of those novels that combines gritty storytelling with a unique (louding) narrative voice. Adunni's dialect of broken English adds a certain authenticity to the tale, while still being easy to understand and follow, unlike, say, the Nigerian Pidgin in An Orchestra of Minorities (another excellent, but far more challenging book).
The story follows fourteen-year-old Adunni from her rural Nigerian village where she is forced into a marriage with a much older man, to a job under an abusive employer in Lagos. All the while, Adunni is constantly looking for a way to better herself, to become educated, to find her voice and be able to put it to good use. As the reader, we're in a unique position to both see into Adunni's mind-- her wishes, fears and desires --and bear witness to her struggles to understand those around her, especially when someone uses an English idiom that we understand, but she takes literally.
I want to ask, to scream, why are the women in Nigeria seem to be suffering for everything more than the men?
She is met with many hardships, including physical and sexual abuse, making the book hard to read at times, yet, for me, still impossible to look away from out of a need to see that Adunni made it through alright. The novel is also scattered with facts about Nigeria-- each one tying in some way with the story being told --which were interesting to me.
The only minor complaint I have is that I wasn't 100% sold on the necessity of the Rebecca story. It felt like a strange attempt to introduce a mystery subplot, with secret notes and smears of blood and whatnot, and the author really played up the mystery of it all to (view spoiler)
[have it resolve in quite a benign way. (hide spoiler)]But this is still a compelling book with a very charismatic protagonist. Probably one of those that could be read in 1-2 sittings if you have the time to spare.
Rating: really liked it
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
Courageous!
Compelling!
Fearless!
I loved this book so much I could not stop talking about this and recommending this book! I haven’t read a book like this since forever and what a powerful and emotional read this was for me.
What an amazing debut novel by Abi Dare whose writing transported me to Adunni’s life, struggles, misfortunes and triumph as well. I loved reading the book in its colloquial voice of Adunni, a fourteen year old Nigerian girl, who was sold into marriage as the third wife to a much older man, who wanted a young wife in order to produce a son.
Abused and mistreated by the first wife, Adunni runs away only to find herself a slave in a wealthy household suffering all forms of abuse. Despite the life she is given, Adunni is determined to live out her dreams of going to school and becoming a teacher one day.
The story of Adunni will break your heart, and mend it right back up. The writing is very easy to read and you will find that you will become attached to Adunni and rooting for her to persevere and win in this life that is so set against her. This book made me laugh, cry, squirm to the point of discomfort and feel the different emotions all in one reading.
Congratulations to Abi Dare for an amazing and successful debut.
I highly recommend this book!!
Rating: really liked it
A Modern Day Les MiserablesAdunni has one goal in life: to develop her louding voice, respect when she enters a room. She dreams of the day that she can return to school; however, at the age of fourteen, her father marries her off to Morufu, a man old enough to be her father and who already has two other wives. What is in store for Adunni?
The Girl With the Louding Voice was such a moving masterpiece. At one point in the book, Adunni is in desperate need of help, and not only does she receive no help, the neighbors start to call out, "Thief!" just to get her to go away. The feelings that Adunni resonated so deeply with me, because a version of her story still echoes in the United States. How many women reported Bill Cosby? How many women said that Larry Nasar was inappropriate? Were this women helped? Nope. Instead they were ridiculed, called names, and labeled as crazy or attention seeking.
This book also had some deeply stirring moments. One person in particular died never knowing the ripple effect of her kind acts. Although there were many horrible actors in this book, there were also many people who were kind and generous who did all that they could to help Adunni. A small kindness is never wasted. What can you do to show kindness today?
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Rating: really liked it
**** Nominated for best debut fiction, it should’ve won it’s that good***
After reading so many rave reviews for this book I just had to get the audiobook. WOW is all I can say!! This book touched me in so many ways, I felt laughter, love, fear, betrayal, anguish and finally triumph! I don’t always write reviews on audiobooks that I receive from my library but this book is spectacular and not to be missed.
Adunni is a 14 y/o Nigerian woman who has recently lost her mother, who was her best friend! She is still in mourning.
Adunni has only ever wanted to receive an education. Her mother instilled this idea into her since she was very young. She knows that an education is the only thing that will get her out of Nigeria and find a place where her “louding voice” can be heard. “I will finish my primary and secondary and university schooling and become teacher because I don't just want to be having any kind voice... I want a louding voice."
Her father is worthless and only wants to find a way to make money to pay the rent on their miserable shell of a house. She has an older brother who finds work sometimes and a younger brother whom she has been caring for and loves..
Her father, against her will, marries her off to a much older man. The man wants Adunni to provide him with a son that his first two wives have not given him. You heard right, Adunni is to be his third wife.
After enduring just a few weeks of this unwanted, loveless marriage, this young 14 y/o finds a way to get out of her village only to end up as a “slave” to a rich Nigerian woman and her husband. She is supposed to receive wages which she never gets. She is treated in the worst possible way, humiliated, beaten, forced to do things she doesn’t want to. At one point she barely escapes being raped by the husband.
She finally finds a way out. She studies and applies for a scholarship to school. She has help along the way. The cook at the house where she works and a younger woman who is an acquaintance of her woman boss. She studies English and Nigerian history through books she finds in the unused library and gifts of books from her new friend.
I have heard that the dialect can be hard to read in the book but listening to the audiobook it was not a problem, in fact it added so much to Adunni’s character.
It’s hard to believe that this is still taking place today. The patriarchal society of Nigeria makes it very difficult for a young woman to escape into a new life. Girls of 14 years are often married off, giving birth to many children. Most of the population lives in poverty and there is not enough food to feed the many large families.
This was so eye opening that I have begun to do some research on what is going on in Nigeria. I found this article to be very informative https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/i...
Please do read or listen to this book, it is one of my top books of 2020!
Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars
“Your schooling is your voice, child. It will be speaking for you even if you didn’t open your mouth to talk. It will be speaking till the day God is calling you come.”
Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who wants nothing more than to go to school and become a teacher. Her mother is the one who encourages her to find not just her voice, but her “louding voice”. But, when her mother dies, Adunni is sold by her father to a much older man to be his third wife.
What follows is a life of abuse and degradation with no opportunity to go to school. These are heavy themes but what makes this book shine is the spirit of Adunni. She’s spunky, filled with life and light, never losing her optimism and hope for an education and better life. She is naïve and childlike, unaware of the ways of the world, which was endearing and added much needed humor.
The entire story is told in broken English. I feared this would annoy me but I quickly fell into the rhythm and grew to enjoy it. I highly recommend this book on audio.
“Everybody in the whole world be speaking different. We all be speaking different because we all are having different growing-up life, but we can all be understanding each other if we just take the time to listen well.”
Inspiring and emotional, this is a moving story and I loved being transported into a world I knew little about. I very much enjoyed the facts about Nigeria sprinkled throughout the book.
It could be seen as a bit predictable but I read it as a parable, a story with a lesson. Adunni represents the girls who came before her and those who will come after her, the girls whose voices and intelligence have been dimmed due to poverty, lack of opportunity, the exploitation of children, enforced servitude, and the wide gap between the rich and the poor.
If you love a book that will break your heart, then stitch it up again, this is the book for you. I highly recommend this heartfelt story with memorable characters.
• I received a free digital copy from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review
Rating: really liked it
Brilliant, outstanding, heartfelt, powerful, inspirational!
Dear Abi Dare helped us to hear fourteen years old Adunni’s voice perfectly loud and clear with her lyrical portraits and her special unique story telling skills!
We hear Adunni’s voice not only with our ears but also with our entire six senses, with our hearts and our souls! She leaves indelible and remarkable imprint on your soul! You cry and you smile each time you remember her story!
This is one of the most powerful, thought provoking, moving stories I’ve read on this year! It fastens your heartbeat! It breaks your heart! It crushes your soul! It shakes you to the core!
Dear Adunni is so young, she is kind, good-hearted young girl with decent, delicate soul! She already becomes motherless at young age, living with her cruel father who never treats her right, taking her from the school, restricting her dreams! Now he wants to take her entire freedom to force her marry with a man older than him. He already has two more wives!
But Adunni just want to go to back to school, living like her peers, filling her brain with more knowledge to chase her dream to become teacher. But now life deals her a compelling hand. What she’s going to do? How she will adjust her new life? Will she be able to resist and find a way to chase her own dreams?
She becomes a house maid of one of the monstrous human beings but she keeps her patience and kindness intact to get through those tough times of your life!
It’s impossible not to empathize with her curious mind, the way of her questioning things, how remarkable perspective to the outside world and her interactions with other women who have different angles about the life, have been shaped and molded by different experiences.
I don’t recommend you only once, I scream and advise you three times to read this book over and over again! It’s best of the best reads of the year!
Actually I’m planning to change my vote to support this book at Goodreads Choice Awards fiction nominees! It’s already my big winner!
Rating: really liked it
Soooooo..
The plot really wasn't all that. Maybe because I am Nigerian and have heard the story of the girl who really wants to go to school but is forced into an early marriage way too many times and have become indifferent toward it.
But the real problem with book for me was the writing.
The main character, Adunni is semi-literate. She's only had a few years of school, and her command of the English language is seriously lacking. Which makes sense because English isn't her first language. The story, which is told from her perspective is written entirely in dialect. That's right, the book is written in broken English. I understand why some people would choose to write in dialect. For one, it helps the reader gain a clearer picture of the setting and character, and that it did, though I did not need the help. However, this was done in detriment to the connection I could have felt to Adunni and her story regardless of the relative ordinariness of the plot.
It also bothered me that the writing wasn't completely consistent.
How do you go from this:
"The cushion have spoil because our last born, Kayus, he have done too many piss inside it. Since the boy was a baby, he been pissing as if it is a curse. The piss mess the cushion, so Mama make Kayus to be sleeping on it for pillow."
To this:
"That sweet smell of a rosebush sitting around a mint tree, of the coconut soap in her hair just after a washing at Agan waterfalls."...in the space of a few sentences over and over again. I found the switches pretty irksome. Pick a struggle, will you?
But I did like Adunni's character. Her strength and resolve, and you cannot help but root for her.
Would I reread this? Nope. Too stressful
Would I recommend this? To fans of African Fiction perhaps.
Rating: really liked it
Wow!! What an adventure. Adunni is a girl with a vision!! After all that life continues to throw at her, she is still willing to always fight. The best part about her vision is that she recognizes that the fight is not with her alone but with the many girls in Nigeria who have gone through what she has been through and probably worse. The ending does end at a time when she is still really young, so we don’t see what her future is like. It’s fine because, after all that we’ve seen from her, we know she is going to do great things.
The story was really hard to get through sometimes. The views of women in some cultures are really horrible, and this one exposed these hard truths. It's fascinating that Adunni realized that there was something that just wasn’t right about this, and knew that she needed to take her future into her own hands. I just know that her mom was a fantastic woman. Adunni couldn’t stop thinking about her!
I also really liked how the Nigerian culture was vivid in this, even in the dark parts. The parts where they believed rituals could change a situation…like that’s pretty accurate.
And one thing I’ve definitely been impacted by is the idea of a “pounding” voice. Compelling concept!!
Rating: really liked it
Audiobook....read by Adjoa Andoh....(Library overdrive),
And....
synced with the ebook that I own.
“The Girl With Louding Voice”, deserves to win every award it’s nominated for!!!!
Why are the women in Nigeria suffering so much more than the men? WHY????
My heart was heavy—
taking in so much sorrow, and pain.
I was crying and laughing at the same time....towards the end.... a complete emotional mess.
My god.... this novel is BEAUTIFUL!!!!
Love the song at the end....but tears took awhile to stop.
It’s a book ... I wish everyone would read
Deeply felt and moving!!!!
Highly recommend!!!
Rating: really liked it
5 stars!!
This is immediately going on my best of 2020 list. There is so much to hold on to and talk about with this very special book. I found myself bereft of all hope as I read about Adunni's life, yet she continually amazed me. It opens with Adunni learning she will soon be married to a man older than her father, where she will become the third wife in her new home. To think that this practice still exists today all over the world! All Adunni wanted was to go to school and earn an education. My heart just broke for her. So many girls in this and similar situations are being robbed of opportunities and it made me so thankful that my daughter (and me too come to think of it) were saved this terrible fate. In ninth grade English, we had a unit called 'The Indomitable Spirit" and if this book were alive and kicking in 1997 when I took that course, The Girl With The Louding Voice would have been front and center. Adunni was unconquerable and that gave me hope. That kept me reading.
I read an egalley of this, but will be sure to add this to my book collection because the writing was phenomenal. My copy will be full of fluorescent highlighting because it was just that good. I absolutely urge you to read this book. Run if you have to! Abi Dare is without a doubt one of my new favorites and I will be sure to add her to my list of auto-buy authors.
Thank you to Edelweiss, Dutton Books for the opportunity to read and provide an honest review of this book.
Review Date: 02/10/2020
Publication Date: 02/25/2020
Rating: really liked it
A beautiful debut novel!Once again I judged a book by its cover and once again, doing so did not disappoint. The main character, our narrator, is every bit as bold and brilliant as the colours on this cover, leaping out from the page as soon as she starts to speak and tell her story.
One of the criteria of a good writer is the ability to make us feel for their characters. Be it positive or negative, we become emotionally involved in their lives. Almost from the beginning of
The Girl with the Louding Voice, I was invested in Adunni, wanted her life to be better, her dreams of an education to be fulfilled.
It is written in the vernacular of English of Adunni's town in Nigeria which I thought gave the novel authenticity. It has a beautiful cadence that draws the reader right in and makes it a book you don't want to put down.
I particularly enjoyed that many of the chapters opened with facts about Nigeria, a country I know little about. I hadn't, for instance, realised that it's the 7th most populous country in the world, and one in seven Africans are Nigerian. Another thing I hadn't known is about Nigeria's film industry, known as Nollywood. Its worth is about $5 billion and is the second largest in the world.
I do have two complaints about this book though, which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5: The story is predictable; right from the beginning you know where it's going. Also, though it held my interest 100% for most of the book, by the last 50 or so pages, my interest was waning. I think this was due to the unbelievability of the conversations that took place between Adunni and Big Madam (the woman for whom she was a servant). It suddenly felt inauthentic and as though the author was just intent on wrapping the story up neatly. It also became overly sentimental towards the end; some readers like that in a story -- I don't.
Overall, it's a beautiful story of a young girl who longs for an education and a better life but has to fight great odds to reach her dreams. Also, this is not a young adult novel, though it is about a teenage girl. I point that out because a lot of us do not enjoy YA and I don't want readers to be put off thinking this book belongs in that genre. It does not.
Rating: really liked it
This was heartbreaking, beautiful, and raw— all wrapped around tightly around my heart. So powerful and enduring. I loved it so, so much. One of the best debuts I've ever read. More please Abi Daré!!!!
4.5 STARS Twitter | Bookstagram | Youtube |
Rating: really liked it
The Girl with the Louding Voice is a powerfully unforgettable story about an extraordinary 14-year-old Nigerian girl’s journey in finding her louding voice to use it to do better, do more. To fight for her choice for a future not only for herself but to help other girls in Nigeria who must obey their fathers and are defined by their marriages find theirs. I loved everything about Adunni and her story, and she is a character to admire.
“I want to enter a room, and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking. I want to live in this life and help many people so that when I grow old and die, I will still be living through the people I am helping”
Abi Daré gives Adunni her own louding voice here in the story that shines through her actions. I loved how she showed me what it means to have a louding voice. Adunni faces loneliness, setbacks and suffering that broke my heart. Her courage, empathy, kindness and strength put my heart back together. I loved her curiosity and her will to understand everyone and everything around her.
The characters and relationships between them are unforgettable, and I loved the contrast here with how different the women are and their experiences that shaped them and how they use their voices. I loved the endearing relationships Adunni had, and with each one, she learns something about herself, and how to find her voice.
I listened and read this one, and the pose is different from what I am used too. It did take some time to get used to but once I did, I could hear both the narrators and Adunni’s voice that drew me right into the story. Abi Daré and the narrator beautifully capture the voice and sound of Adunni. I could clearly hear not only her voice but her louding voice slowly coming out. I highly recommend this one and the audiobook
I received a copy from the publisher on Edelweiss.
Rating: really liked it
Abi Daré's
The Girl with the Louding Voice lives up to all the hype and praise, and then some!!
Adunni is a 14-year-old girl growing up poor in Nigeria. Her mother recognized Adunni’s intelligence and fought for her to get an education, but that ended when she died. Regardless of what she wants from her future, because of their poverty, her father sells her into marriage as the third wife of an old man desperate for male children.
“My mama say education will give me a voice. I want more than just a voice, Ms. Tia. I want a louding voice. I want to enter a room and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking. I want to live in this life and help many people so that when I grow old and die, I will still be living through the people I am helping."
Marriage, the demands of a husband, and the cruelty of one of his other wives are almost too much for Adunni to bear. And when tragedy strikes in her new home, she must flee, although she knows as a young woman most view her as nothing but property.
She winds up being taken to Lagos and is sold into servitude to a rich, cruel woman. She is treated horribly aand beaten routinely, but she tries not to let this woman or her philandering husband steal her dreams or make her believe she is nothing. It takes two people—the household chef and a woman in the same social group as her employer—to help try and save Adunni, but will it be too late?
What a book this was. It was brutal and emotional and utterly beautiful, but Adunni’s spirit is a shining light. She is honestly one of the most memorable characters I’ve ever read about. At times this is difficult to read and at times her broken English is distracting, but as she works to better herself it becomes easier to understand her.
Daré has created a masterpiece.
The Girl with the Louding Voice is truly one of the best books I've read this year.
Check out my list of the best books I read in 2019 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2019.html.
Check out my list of the best books of the decade at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-favorite-books-of-decade.html.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/.
Rating: really liked it
The book description calls
The Girl With the Louding Voice “
a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams” and I couldn’t put it more perfectly.
Adunni is a 14 year old girl living in a rural Nigerian village. She dreams of pursuing her education to become a teacher and eventually help other girls, but her father has other plans for her, including marriage to an older man, which will help provide for their family. Against her will, Adunni complies, but faces awful incidents in marriage with her new family, one of which will force her to make a choice, altering the course of her future.
I loved Adunni, my heart swelled for her and her determination, her interest in school and wanting to learn, read, and write. She suffered so much loss and was put in so many terrible situations that a 14 year old should never be subjected to, they would be difficult for anyone to deal with.
“
You just need to hold on to that belief and never let go. When you get up every day, I want you to remind yourself that tomorrow will be better than today. That you are a person of value. That you are important. You must believe this ...”
I admired Adunni’s fierceness and was rooting for her the whole way.
The Girl With the Louding Voice is a heartfelt story.
