God's Children Are Little Broken Things, 2022, Arinze Ifeakandu ****

This novel is unlike anything I've read before. It's built on the lives of gay men in Nigeria, a subject I'd only ever encountered in fragments and whispers, never told this openly, this fully, until Arinze Ifeakandu's debut.

Structured as a collection of interlinked stories, the book moves through parents who disown their own children over their sexuality, men who marry women out of fear rather than love, and boys who are bullied, harassed, or falsely accused simply for who they are. But it's also something warmer than that list suggests: a coming-of-age portrait of gay boys and men in Nigeria, how they party, how they flirt, how they build ordinary lives inside an unforgiving world.

Ifeakandu is clearly gifted. His prose is exquisite, the kind you want to slow down for. I'll admit, though, that I sometimes lost the thread with so many characters shifting in and out of focus across stories. It asks for patience, but it rewards it too.

A few stories stayed with me long after I finished the book.

"Where the Heart Sleeps" follows Nonye, who returns home for her father's burial only to find his partner, Tochukwu, still living in the

house. Watching her father's family try to force Tochukwu out, refusing even now to acknowledge the relationship, was genuinely infuriating to read.

"What the Singers Say About Love" centers on Kayode, a rising musician who loves his partner deeply but hides it out of fear for his career. There's something quietly humiliating about watching someone shrink themselves for the sake of an image.

"Michael's Possession" was the story that broke my heart. It involves the death of a little boy, and I won't say more than that, it deserves to be felt firsthand.

"Mother's Love", the closing story, works almost entirely on irony, and it's a fitting, bittersweet note to end on.

If I could change anything, I'd have wanted Ifeakandu to give himself more room, a single novel rather than a collection, so his characters could fully develop and he could settle into one voice, whether first person or third. That said, this is a book I recommend wholeheartedly, especially if you want to go deeper into the realities of queer life in Nigeria.