Terhemba Wuam
Book Title: Fruit of Pain, A Novel
Author: Mabel Adinya Ade
Publisher: Sevhage Publishers Makurdi
Year: 2021
Pages: Viii + 95
ISBN: 978-978-58437-6-7
All stories, are stories about life. Mabel Adinya’s Fruit of Pain, is even more so. It looks at, though through fiction at the travails and challenges that faces women in their individualized trials in the attempt at birthing forth new life.
Stories of motherhood, the process by which the woman births forth new life, occupies a special genre of its own, not just in African literature but global literature. The challenges inherent in the process by which the union of man and woman produces forth new life that sustains humanity has been the staple of both religious and secular stories. The story of Sarah and her travails show that even where there is love the pressure of expectation and possibility of barrenness can break the hearts of women. Buchi Emecheta’s The Joy of Motherhood also reiterates the challenges of motherhood.
The difficulties women face in Africa when the fruit of the womb is delayed maybe unlike that of any other society in its sociological, cultural and psychological ramifications. The turmoil, mental torture and ostracization that women face from kith and kin when conceiving is delayed often challenges the strongest of women, who despite this may still have to carry around a strong face in public. Which again when they try to be strong is also further used against them by their detractors so much so that to some family members such a woman’s role in the family is without much value.
Because knowledge of the future is often far off, young couples even with the perfect match when they marry may have no inclinations of the roadblocks and pitfalls waylaying them as they hope to build a home on love, filled with the fruit of the womb. The intimation of a faith that may be capricious in its gifts to individuals and couples can thus contrive to shatter the illusions of couples as they wait year upon year. In waiting they may do so in support of each other, that is each pair being a shoulder for the other to rest upon. This is what they often offer to each other. But this desirable state is often shattered by the intrusion of close relatives who intervene, not always with the best intentions upon wife and husband.
Mabel Adinya Ade’s Fruit of Pain is an exploration of these issues, in addition to the societal birthing challenges that women face in Nigeria. This story is told through the fictional world of Mabel Adinya Ade’s, Fruit of Pain, in which the love story of Mercy and Jude Albert, can be said to have been made in heaven. Despite this, their marriage is however replete with trials. These trials are at the heart of this wonderful book.
While Fruit of Pain is a novel and a work of fiction there is detailed world building in it. The author constructs for us a world that the characters inhabit, not only Mercy and Jude but several others such as the intrusive Uncle Tony and his wife Agatha, the attentive and concerned Dr Joseph, the supportive Deborah, professional colleagues, expectant mothers, worrying mothers and trying mothers, all struggling to keep their sanity in the midst of merely living and getting by. Furthermore, the literary style adopted to reveal this world to readers fluctuate between the private lives of the Alberts and the world of work, the professional life that Mercy also inhabits and thrives in, that is interspaced by the author in between the chapters.
In the world that is constructed, the author presents to us the life of a social worker, their role in health care delivery, especially with maternal health, where the social role, once it is understood can be acknowledge as being as significant as the medical aspect to the well-being of both the mother and baby. And also been equally fundamental to the question of whether the pregnancy would proceed to full term.
While in this story, there are detractors like Uncle Tony, there are also often family members who provide the support for the challenged female as Mercy, to lean upon. This being without regard or prejudice to the prior condition of the spouse’s support or not. In Mercy’s case this support comes from Deborah, another family member.
In Fruit of Pain, it is not ultimately about barrenness at the end, but a state where empathy for the grieving can be thrown out, when for instance Uncle Tony visited Mercy after she had a miscarriage, his words to her could only feel like the turning of a sword. He said to her, “Don’t worry, God is still alive, He’ll take care of you… After all, he did not create your womb to be a grave for carrying dead babies. I’m sure since the womb is still there, something good will come out of it” (55). Who, or which woman will not recoil from hearing this. This being a condition women face daily.
The story of Fruit of Pain also revolves around the role of wives in the modern world. In addition to making the home work; the demands of work on the professional woman of today are enormous. Mercy like other Nigerian women, takes care of the home and the children, and also faces the need to deliver on tough assignments and datelines in the office. She thus has to grapple with the home and the office at the same time and surmount both.
For many women it is sadly often just the pain, with which they contend and live with. In this work, Mercy’s spiritual dedication helps her to get by and the love of her family gives her the foundation to forge on, with a deep understanding of the blessings made available to her that would have otherwise been denied, in which case it would have only been pain, pain without the fruit, which unfortunately many women in Nigeria continue to suffer due to inadequacies and lapses in the health care system that fails women and denies them safe motherhood.
This is the message imbedded in this well-crafted story, that can however, be gut-wrenching to read. A good story provides tension and this one does so in spades, and the reader would find that while thinking a lot in following the story, the author allows no moment of intellectual laxity on the reader’s part, as the author too in the writing of this book provides a rich stimulating menu.
Here therefore is your thought-provoking menu, prepared by Mabel Adinya Ade. It is a work with the potential to change perceptions about motherhood in Nigeria and Africa, by the story it tells. Reading it will influence the reader towards positive action, and if readers are touched emotionally by the power of the prose, then the objective of the work which is both to entertain and to instruct would have been achieve.
It is novel whose themes broadly cover such subjects of sociology of medicine, psychology of the family and family economics. Endowed with these rich scholarly thematic preoccupations, these constitutes both the novel’s major strength and weaknesses. The weakness being in its storytelling approach verging too much on the scholarly. While its strengths draws from the fact that once the reader gets the hang of the story, it becomes a hugely enjoyable piece to be savoured.
It becomes a work to be enjoyed with the different themes merging together to form a heartbreaking narrative. A story of Mercy’s and Jude’s love finding redemption and satisfaction. And Mercy Albert deciding at the end after turmoil that:
“My story and work is a reminder that there are many similar issues out there in our society and we need to contribute towards changing this narrative and investing more in maternal health to save both mothers and children for the sake of posterity. Importantly, there is no need to dwell on sorrow. We can rise above every situation with grace and who knows how beautiful we will be tomorrow” (95).
At the end Mabel Adinya Ade has created a world in her fiction in which the vision is a positive one. In this world there is pain, but there are also fruits. Mercy Albert in spite of, or despite her pain, in Fruit of Pain continues to care for her fellow women.
Terhemba Wuam is a Professor with the Department of History, Kaduna State University, Kaduna, Nigeria. He is co-editor of Challenges and Prospects of Development in Twenty-First Nigeria (Bahiti and Dalila Publishers, 2019).
NIGERIA REVIEW OF BOOKS 