TITLE: THE FRAGRANCE OF ROSES
AUTHOR: KIKE OJO
PUBLISHERS: OLYMPIA PUBLISHERS, LONDON
YEAR: 2018, Pages282
ISBN: 978-1-78830-121-3
REVIEWER: OMOLOLA A. LADELE(PhD)
Generally, African fictive works do not naturally tend towards the name of flowers in their titles, neither are flowers often the central literary motif in African literature.This seems in contrast to what great and, incidentally, male writers such as Richard Lovelace, Robert Burns, Shakespeare, William Blake, William Faulknerand several others have done with the timeless, captivating wonder of the rose flower in particular. However, it appears that African women writers are more disposed to using the name of flowers in some of their titles, mostly indicating some immediate gendered thematic or aesthetic inclination. Some of their recent titles include:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus (2005), and Adimora- Ezeigbo’sRoses and Bullets (2011). Thus, when Nigeria’s Kike Ojo titles her debut novel, The Fragrance of Roses (2018), it is immediately clear that the author wants to strike a specific chord with gender or femininity. Kike Ojo thus joins the swelling ranks of female Nigerian writers such as Lola Shoneyin, Sefi Ata, Lola Akande and others who centralize concerns about women in their works.
The rose in Kike Ojo’s novel, The Fragrance of Roses, is emblematic. It is complexly associated with the intricate emotions of love and beauty and its scintillating fragrances, hurtful thorns and intricate, alluring beauty of petal arrangement inform the narrative trajectory of Kike’s novel. The complex nature of the rose is the pervading metaphor and image for the life experiences of Temilade, the protagonist and, as I suspect, that of the author herself. There are quite many allusions to the rose in the novel some of which seem somewhat overbearing or contrived. For instance, very early in the narration, the author describes Temilade’s life as “a bed of roses: humble but beautiful beginnings” (16). Shortly after, she further stretches this image thus: “in spite of the usual problems to which African children were prone, her mother’s experience as a nurse and midwife greatly helped. She enjoyed her bed of roses” (17). Following closely after this, is Part three which is subtitled “Thorns of Roses”
Exploring the literary bildungsroman tradition, The Fragrance of Roses, is the growing-up or life story of Temilade —a young precocious girl born into the moderately, middle-class family of Adewale and Remilekun. Born some three years after her parents’ marriage, Temi arrives into a large adulatory family of expectant relations, all prepared to pamper and dote on her. Indeed, the event of her naming became something of a carnival. The novel is set in the more provincial, hinterland of the Ondo/Ekiti—Ile-Ife/Ibadan stretch of the old Western Region of Nigeria, spanning also a period sometime between the late 1950s up to possibly just before the beginning of the new millennium, which somewhat structurally aligns the traditional with the modern.
Structured in seven undulating parts, (from Beautiful Beginnings in part 1, to Stepping Out, Thorns of Roses, The Turn Around, Reaching for the Heights, Love in theAir, and finally Home Sweet Home in part 7), the novel, lineally, chronicles the circumstances of Temi’s birth, her childhood years, and the adventures of young adolescence and boarding schools experiences,appropriately subtitled —‘Stepping Out’. This starts with her admission into the Catholic mission school in Ikere—St Leo’s Girls’ Secondary School. It is also perhaps the most eventful period in Temi’s life as her parents were in the U.K at this time pursing further studies so the young girl has to pick her way through school and the mines of emotional growth.Having successfully negotiated this, university life and maturation as well as her eventual marriage follow, rapidly. Following this chronology, the author foregrounds a typical didactic ideology as she presentsthe entire gamut of the protagonist’s educational, mental and spiritual developmental processes and learning curves.
Temi’s growth is closely supervised and directed by her maternal relations: a large, supportivecommunity of her maternal grandmother—Iya Agba, Aunty Jibike, Baba Elepo— who all help Temi through the learning processes of life even after her mother, Remilekun, had long passed on. They all play important roles in directing Temilade’s path in life as often as the critical points of pressure arise. For instance, when Temilade’s father remarries after his wife’s passing, life becomes miserable for Temilade and her siblings and she seeks ways to escape her misery. She turns to Baba Elepo, a maternal uncle, for help. It is his timely intervention that averts a crises point in Temilade’s young mind. Aunty Jibike, her late mum’s younger sister also rescues her and provides timely succor for Temilade’s troubled growing up years.
The author, surreptitiously, weaves into Temilade’s singular story, that of two other generations of women. Thus, Kike Ojo, in one fell swoop, tells the story of both Iya Agba and Remilekun and through this layered portraiture of women, the author does not present an over-simplified view of women. Rather, the reader gets a more holistic, more realistic picture of the choices the women, individually, make. Whereas Iya Agba has a strong personality and is in control of her rambling household, her daughter, Remilekun, with all her education is cast in strong opposition to her mother’s image. Remilekun is docile and in spite of her ‘been-to ness’ succumbs to the antics of a village girl who goes after her husband, Adewale. Unwilling or unable to fight for her marriage or at the very least, leave to save herself—she stays to endure the psychological torment of an unfaithful husband.
Although women appear to be the central thematic concern in the novel, the author depicts a variety of male characters as they relate with the central female characters. And as is typical in writings by African women which centralise women, the men do not appear as very strong and viable in her Ojo’sportraitures. Perhaps the most significant portrayal is in the Adewale/Djibo delineation through which the author draws several thematic comparisons.
Works Cited
Adichie, Chimamanda N The Purple Hibiscus New York: Anchor Books. 2005. Print.
Adimora-EzeigboRoses and Bullets Lagos: Jalaa book Collective 2011. Print.
Ojo, Kike The Fragrance of Roses London: Olympia Publishers. 2018. Print.
Omolola A. Ladele (PhD) is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, Lagos State University, Nigeria where she teaches several graduate and undergraduate level courses including: African literature, Postcolonial literature, Women and Gender Studies, Feminist Literature, and Literary Theory. She has presented academic papers at international and local conferences in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Nigeria. Many of these have appeared in peer-reviewed local and international journals. She is manuscript reviewer of local and international journals and she is, currently, Co-editor of LAPES –the LASU papers in English Journal. E-mail Omolola.ladele@lasu.edu.ng
