Becoming a Capstone

Omotoyosi Adebayo Becoming a Capstone (2020)
I was puzzled when this emerged from Santa's wrapping paper, given its resemblance to some sort of self-help, or at least motivational tract, and therefore not traditionally my kind of thing.

'It's David's book,' my wife explained helpfully and the penny dropped. David is one of her work colleagues. We attended the naming ceremony for Heaven, his baby daughter, about a year or so ago, which was a pleasure and felt like a great honour. David came to America from Nigeria and I've yet to meet an African I didn't like.

Anyway, this is David's story, how his family came to cross the Atlantic, and how they settled here in Texas. To get it out of the way, it's obviously the work of someone for whom English is not a first language, but the grammar and pace are simply unconventional - at least to me - rather than lacking in expressive power or elegance, and David peppers his account with a wonderful, even poetic turn of phrase. This means that the narrative voice acquires an unmistakably African accent after just a few pages, and so we get some very long sentences.

Segun sat in the middle, staring at everyone and weighing his father's words over the phone in which he told him that he would have to start college from scratch once he got to America in order to acquire a certification that would make him employable after college and give him an edge over those applying to work with foreign degrees.

Under other circumstances, the grammar of Becoming a Capstone might seem a hindrance, but the story takes over and to such an extent that the page turner promised by the back cover is delivered, despite being like nothing else I have read. David's progress from Nigeria, to a listless existence sharing a house with other recent immigrants, to minor brushes with the law, to success as some sort of programming whizz has none of the predictable quality of a typical rags to riches tales, and is told without recourse to any of the usual narrative tricks or short cuts, so the sense of consequence seems very real here; with the tone dictated by our man choosing to focus on what he gets right more than the inevitable stubbed toes.

My only real criticism is that at just over a hundred pages, Becoming a Capstone is surprisingly short for the story it tells. David has a great way of capturing detail and communicating feeling without resorting to sentiment; and I could have stood to hear about life in Lagos in maybe a little more depth.