Flip the Page
A girl perpetually stuck in books, reviewing and recommending books to get you perpetually stuck in books.
This podcast will be highlighting fiction books across all genres from mainly Black authors. If you're struggling finding or deciding what books to read written by Black authors with Black characters and dope storylines, you've found the right place!
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Ep 19 | Someday, Maybe: Literary Fiction and Grief
In today’s episode, we’re leaning back into my bread n butter - literary fiction - with Onyi Nwabineli’s debut novel, Someday, Maybe.
Someday, Maybe is a literary fiction novel about a young woman, named Eve’s, journey through grief after her husband commits suicide - her being the one who finds him. The novel introduces you to Eve’s family and friends as she struggles living underneath the weight of her loss and the means the loss came about.
Someday, Maybe is a novel layered with themes of loss and self-worth, that dissects the complexities of grief and untangles how people, like Eve, can idolize or canonize those who have passed as they memorialize them. In the novel, Eve’s idolization of her husband blinds her to the complexities of who he is as a person, their relationship, and working through her grief.
[Intro Music] Welcome back to Flip the Page. A podcast where I talk about books and give book reviews and book recs, specifically books written by black authors. Period. I'm your host, Zo. And in today's episode, we're going to be leaning back into my bread and butter, literary fiction, with Onyi Nwabineli's debut novel, “Someday, Maybe.” Content warnings for suicide, suicidal ideation, depression and drug abuse. Someday, Maybe is a literary fiction novel about a young woman named Eve. And her journey through grief after her husband commits suicide. Her being the one who finds him. The novel introduces you to Eve's family and friends as she struggles living underneath the weight of her loss and the means with which the loss came about. Someday, Maybe is a novel layered with themes of loss and self-worth that dissects the complexities of grief and untangles how people like Eve can idolize or canonize those who have passed as they memorialize them. In the novel Eve’s idolization of her husband, Q, blinds her to the complexities of who he is as a person, their relationship, and prevents her from working through her grief. This was a heavier read, as obviously it dealt with heavier themes and topics such as grief, suicide, drug abuse, though not as extensive, and delved a bit into racism, specifically anti-Blackness. If you're looking for a novel or a story that really delves into grief and the ugly feelings that can arise as a result of a loss, but a novel that still somehow manages to ground itself in love and understanding. Girl tap in. Quick disclaimer. Fortunately, I haven't had to deal with a lot of grief in my life in the sense that I haven't experienced a loss personally close to me. What I'm discussing is what I'm taking with me from the text. I feel like that's just important to say for context. Anyway. If you're old, you know the drill. If you're new. Spoilers beyond this point. So if you don't want to be spoiled, you can skip ahead to my final thoughts at the end of the episode. Should be time stamped. Part One. The Perfect Husband. Throughout the novel, Eve paints the picture of Quenton or Q, who's her recently divorced, hus- not disposed chile, deceased Eve paints the picture of Q, her recently deceased husband, as a near perfect spouse. She presents him as the ideal partner and romanticizes their relationship a lot. But you can see some cracks in their relationship that kind of pop in and out of the novel. One being a lack of communication and another major point of contention being something, or someone I should say, else that I'm going to get into later. When it comes to a lack of communication, it's more necessarily Quenton, who struggles with communication. Eve brings up these lapses in his communication, where she'll be waiting for him to text back or call back, and you can tell that it bothers her, but She never really focuses on how frustrated his lack of communication gets her. Eve kind of shoulders the responsibility of any like, shortcomings in their relationship. She never puts any onus on Q. She typically kind of just glosses over the issue in the narrative, especially, in like the first parts of the story. there's a multitude of reasons for this. One main one being that Eve is someone with low self-esteem. Oh, I swear, oh, girl, a lot of these books I be reading, my Black sistas... they be having low self-esteem. I think it's important to mention that Quenton is white. Quenton is a white man. Eve is in an interracial relationship. I think that's important for context. Just because I don't think you can ignore race dynamics, especially when you're dealing with a black person who is in a relationship and is experiencing low self-esteem. And you see that with Eve. She is someone with very low self-esteem who constantly has a feeling of unworthiness in the relationship. There's one part in the story where Eve talks about how before Quenton died, one of her worst dreams involving him was him coming to his senses, realizing that he was a quote unquote demigod to her mere mortal, and abandoning her for someone worthy. Yeah. there was also a point in the novel where, Eve is talking about when her and Quenton first met, when they were teenagers in college, I think teenagers or early 20s. And basically she's in a supermarket. And Quenton, like, follows her into the supermarket and is kind of like hitting on her. And she says, white men don't follow black girls around supermarkets unless they suspect they're being robbed. Initially when I was reading the novel, I took her saying, this is being like, snarky, you know. But looking back and rereading that passage, I definitely think it was some low self-esteem mixed in there. Just based off of how she describes his look and how he's basically a teen heartthrob. This, that, this, that. Everybody loves him. He come from like a wealthy family. He basically a royal. At least closely associated with the royal family. Yeah. Looking back, she was almost shook in disbelief that somebody like him would be coming to step to her. What's really ironic, though, about her perception of herself as being unworthy in their relationship, it causes her to center her grief and any type of, reminiscing of their relationship, and Q as a person, she really centers it inward. She focuses on herself. And I don't think she's doing it like, maliciously. It's simply that the guilt that has arisen due to him committing suicide, and her idolization of him has made Eve unable to look outside of herself to be able to understand Q as a person and their relationship. And you see that her lack of inability to understand Q, why he committed suicide and didn't leave a note, plays a huge role in her struggling with grief and struggling to basically live after he passes. There's a recurring theme of Eve focusing on her shortcomings in her relationship with Q, and this focus only grows into a hyper-fixation, when you look at the other main point of contention that I alluded to earlier in their relationship. Mother. [redacted]. Aspen. Part Two. Aspen. Who is Aspen? Q's nasty ass gutter snipe, Mama. The Wicked Witch of the West. Q is essentially a royal. Royal-adjacent. But he's from like a well known family. He's rich, white, generational wealth. And his mama, his mama is a nasty piece of work. A nasty piece of work. Who thinks that this random ass black girl, Eve, that her son met at university is unworthy of him. Unworthy . She's racist as hell and subjects Eve to racist slights. It is explicitly stated by Eve when she remembers moments back in the past with Q, where she brought up the fact that ‘yo mama don't like black people’. But yeah, Aspen is a nasty piece of work. She tries to set up Quenton with white women, well after his relationship with Eve has been established and oh, she ain't got no shame. She'll do this right in front of Eve's face. All of this is pre Q’s passing. The stuff that she tries post Q’s passing? The games that she's out here playing with Eve and her family? Guillotine. Guillotine. Guillotine. After Quenton’s death, you see Eve scrambling for her life, talking about how she's now become a woman who needs to convince people that her relationship with Q is valid. This need to prove her worthiness in their relationship to validate it- this desperation to validate their relationship, I should say, has only been exacerbated by Aspen's nasty ass. Who Q let's speak to Eve however the [redacted] she wanted to. But... Eve ain't gonna clock it. Eve is not going to clock Q's role in that hostile relationship that she's been subjected to, pre and post his death, because she's already had this man up on a pedestal, but his death has essentially promoted him from demigod to God. Q is essentially deified in her eyes. That idolization of him only increases her need to prove that she was a good wife even further, and that she did not fail. She doesn't want to affirm those doubts Aspen had that, Yeah. You weren't worthy of my son. Throughout the story, you don't ever see Eve assigning any blame to Q when it comes to Aspen. You would almost think that Aspen was some like random lady, who just pops up mistreat Eve and vanishes, and that Q doesn't have any relation to her because Eve really does not put any blame on his shoulders in this situation. I think there are two main reasons. One, self-worth in the gutter. Two. Eve is the sole recipient of Aspen's cruelty. Aspen's cruelty doesn't extend to her family because why would Aspen interact with the #blacks? But Aspen's cruelty doesn't extend to Eve's family until after she passes away. As the story progresses, however, you see Eve kind of opening her eyes. More so, her eyes are forced open to these cracks that exist in this deified figure she's turned Quenton into. And these cracks start appearing as she interacts with different people in her life. Including her family, her friends, and fans of Q because he was, a well known artist- photographer. Because he was a well-known photographer. There's this retreat that she goes to post his death that is showcasing some of his work, some seen, some unseen. And she encounters these women who are fans of her husband. As she's sitting and listening to these women discuss her husband and looking at his art and talking about how they can see how sad he was, they can see how depressed he was through his artwork. As they're having these conversations, Eve is listening on kind of as an outside party and you see her struggling with guilt because she feels like she should have known. She feels guilty that someone who didn't personally know her husband, is able to look at his artwork and identify these feelings that she failed to see. Mixed in with this guilt as she's hearing these woman talk, there's this feeling of anger that starts to kind of bubble within her. And this is one of the first times that you feel her, express any type of negative emotion towards Q. But she feels this feeling of anger, and it ties back to a point of contention in their relationship. That he didn't communicate. She feels anger that he didn't speak. Anger, that he chose to put his emotions in his work, when he could have spoken his words, and she might have been able to help him. This is an instance where you see Eve kind of starting to chip away at that, like idealized figure- that idealized image that she has of her husband. It's funny. Not funny. But that feeling of anger only brings with it more guilt that she even feels angry towards him in the first place. There's another moment in the novel, when her best friend tells her point blank, Quenton wasn't perfect. The instant that her best friend says that, you can see Eve kind of just like glitch. You can see her glitching through the pages. She's like, what the hell are you talking about? It's one of the first instances where a third party, for lack of better words, has openly slighted her husband since his passing. Because her family has been very careful to, like, mind their words, even though it's clear from the way they kind of like, tiptoe around things that they had their own frustrations with Q and the dynamic of that relationship, and Aspen. so when Eve's friend brings up the fact that, hey, sister girl, your husband actually wasn't perfect, you see Eve, in the moment reject the thought. But you also have her being forced to confront an imperfection in her husband. In a conversation with her best friend after this, Eve is kind of bringing up the fact that, she's hurt after he passed away, especially the fact that he committed suicide. And her best friend... She clocks it. She tells her that. Yeah, you're hurt, but you were also hurt before he died. Because Aspen's been a total [redacted] And your man just let her be. And when I tell you. Oh, my God. Y’all. I was shaking the page. I was like, clock it, clock it, clock that TEA! Oh, I had to take a moment. Y'all don't understand. Y'all don't understand the relief and validation that I felt when someone finally spoke what I- this feeling that- these words that had been choking me the whole time I was reading this book. Having someone just express it... oh the relief, the validation. Oh my God, because it was just pissing me off, y'all, the [redacted] that Aspen was doing... I was like, it’s no way bro, it’s no way. Oh my God. There is kind of a turning point in the story, when Aspen's cruelty reaches out towards Eve's parents and her family. Eve was fine, not necessarily fine, but she was fine staying quiet about Aspen, or kind of just like managing that frustration because it was just focused on her. But as soon as it kind of spread out to her family and her best friend. Y’all. Aspen was calling up her best friend at work, ringing up her best friend at work, sending threats to her family. As soon as they reached that point where, like, whoa, now you're overstepping bounds. Oh, girl. That crack was blown wide open. you see Eve say for the first time that she hates him for this. And I think that girl, that confession was a long time coming, because I don't think that this feeling of- this feeling is hatred for Q is something that she's only experiencing now. I think it’s something that's always been there. But it's kind of reached this point where she can't hold in that feeling anymore. Right. It's not to say that it's only hatred that she feels for Q. That's not what I'm saying at all. And I'm also not trying to- Girl, actually, [REDACTED] that. I'm not about to def- I ain't about to defend no white man. Like RIP my [redacted] but whoa, I'm not about to be defending him for this [redacted]. I'm so sorry. Stone me. Stone me. Stone me. Whoa! I'll never change. I'm so sorry. I'm not about to be defending this white man. Hold on. But anyway, It's not like it's just hate that she feels for him. It's like there's hatred there for this one ugly part of their relationship and their relationship dynamic, that he essentially enabled. Didn't do anything about, that's now impacting her loved ones, and that has always impacted her. And this just happens to be a really nasty, ugly part of our relationship that actually makes me hate you. And now you're struggling because it's like, damn, your mom is just. Your mom is just a [redacted]. Your mom is just a [redacted] and you've let her be this way, our whole relationship. But yeah. This idealized image that she has of her husband essentially is just, blown wide open and she realizes he's not a perfect man. Nobody is. Part Three. Disillusionment. Nobody's perfect. Word to Miley. As we're entering the latter parts of the story, and Eve is kind of confronted- she's kind of forced to face truths about her husband and their relationship, and acknowledge the good and the bad. There's a part in the story where she runs through some of the things that happened in their relationship. He would leave on Christmas so they wouldn't spend Christmas together because he would leave to be with his mother. She would make snide remarks - sometimes racist - and he just pretended he couldn't hear them. Refused to contest her on anything that she said. And Eve mentions that she just couldn't give him an ultimatum where he would have to choose between her and his mother because she was too frightened that he wouldn't choose her. So there was no way she was about to serve him up an ultimatum already feeling like she's not- already feeling like she punching up in a relationship. So obviously if you confront him and tell him pick between you and your mom, he's going to choose his mom. Eve talks about how she didn't know what he saw in her that made him choose her. A lot of the time in their relationship, she essentially was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for him to leave her. She didn't want to become that person in the relationship who challenged him, or initiated arguments with him, whether that be about his mother or about his inability to communicate, because she didn't want to give him any excuse to leave her. Which leads us to the events that led up to Quenton, offing himself, that fed deeply into Eve's guilt. They had a fight, a day or a few prior to when he offed himself. And their fight was about communication. Eve talks about how she had left voicemails on his phone, going through their argument and essentially delivering threats - however empty - her words, not mine! This is not shade. Delivering threats in the voicemail of divorce and calling him selfish. And it was while she was leaving those voicemails that he offed himself. she kind of goes through how, his issues with communication kind of like triggered this part in her that was just convinced that he would stop choosing her. That he didn't necessarily see her as worth communicating with. And this idea kind of came to fruition for her when he chose to off himself. The feelings that arose from within her and the situations surrounding him, offing himself, that context and how she internalized everything just led her to essentially venerate him. And I think it was Eve confronting those complexities of who he is through her family, through her friends, even through the ladies at that retreat. I think it was her understanding different sides of her husband and who he was that allowed her to understand him better and understand her grief better and process her grief better. Quenton wasn't a perfect man. He wasn't a perfect husband. He was flawed as both a person and a husband. He was a grown, man who was dealing with a neglectful, loveless childhood, who sought desperately to find love that he didn't receive as a child in his relationships, and prove himself to his mother and Eve. To prove himself to his mother, but also to prove her wrong. To prove that he could make something of himself, doing something that he loved to do, photography, that didn't follow the traditional path that she had wanted him to follow. Q was also a man, who struggled with communication and was a selfish enabler and accomplice - whether he wanted to be or not, it's moot, because that's what he became - who allowed his mother to slight and denigrate Eve, the entirety of their relationship. And you see, Eve expressed that she wanted him to defend her, but he didn't. You've shown me, who you prioritize in this relationship and it's kind of just affirmed Aspen's opinion and my own that I'm not worthy enough to be here. I'm not worthy enough to be in this relationship with you. And you see, there's a lot of resentment that was built up within Eve and Eve projected anger onto Aspen, and I think a lot of it is- a lot of it is obviously valid and genuine anger, but a lot of it is also displaced anger. It's anger that she feels towards. Q. Confronting these complexities of Q and their relationship allowed Eve to truly start working through her grief by the end of the novel, and kind of start to reconcile with the thought that he had his reasons for why he offed himself, and they were his, to have. She wasn't entitled to them, and she would have to eventually relinquish that entitlement that she felt. And I think that entitlement was tied to her inability to understand him or even begin to start to understand him because she was unable to separate Q from this idealized figure she had made him out to be, and to flesh out the complexities of who he was as a person. Who he was as a person, their relationship, and the feelings- both good and ugly- that she was feeling. And sometimes that understanding is understanding that sometimes you’re just never going to understand. Flip or Skip. This book was a flip. Are you kidding me? Y'all heard me talking my ass off for who knows how long. I'm gonna have to cut this video down. This book was a flip. I gave it a 4.5 out of five. A 4.5 out of five. I might as well round that up to a five. The descriptions of grief in this novel just felt so real. The descriptions of Eve's emotional turmoil, the descriptions of her struggling with these varying emotions towards Q in her grief. They just ate. It was just good. It was so good. I would recommend it. And I'm going to be copping a physical copy for myself. That's it for this episode. If you made it to the end. Clap for yourself. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like and subscribe. To like and subscribe. MHMM And don't be shy to drop a comment. Don't be shy. I know people be shy nowadays. Just don't be shy. Drop a comment. I'mma reply. I ain't got nothing else going on. Anyway, thanks for watching. Catch you in the next episode. Buh byyyye.
