Ifemelu and Obinze were high school and college sweethearts, but had to leave Nigeria when their futures became constricted by their country’s instability. A poignant tragedy ends their relationship, and for thirteen years they remain separated, she in the American Northeast, and he in London. Although her life in the U.S. comes to surmount its early struggles, she doesn’t fit in, and she is homesick. When she opts to move back home, he is now married with a daughter. What happens, now that they find themselves still so deeply in love, even after so much has changed?

I’m always a sucker for an epic romance, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 novel Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, evokes its central love story so palpably that I cried near the end of the book. The event that initially sunders the two protagonists is very compellingly written. The other strongest sections, for me, were the narrative about Ifemelu’s father’s cousin, Aunty Uju, and her ups and downs as the mistress of a powerful general; and the thoughtfully evolving connection between Ifemelu and Dike, Aunty Uju’s son and Ifemelu’s protégé.

You also can’t discuss this book without mentioning its commentaries on race. Ifemelu only discovers race — only becomes Black, as she puts it — after she immigrates from Nigeria to America. Her insights provide fruitful material for her blog on the subject. Neither with her first American boyfriend, a white man, or with her second American boyfriend, a Black American, does she feel quite at home. I especially enjoyed a minor episode in a department store where Ifemelu and her Nigerian-American friend are asked, by the cashier, which saleswoman helped them today: “Was it the one with long hair?” “Well, both of them had long hair.” “The one with dark hair?” Both of them had dark hair. Later, Ifemelu asks her friend, “Why didn’t she just ask ‘Was it the black girl or the white girl?'” The response: “Because this is America. You’re supposed to pretend that you don’t notice certain things.”

A few weaknesses kept this novel from joining my short list of all-time favorite contemporary novels (which, at this point, would be The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, And the Mountains Echoed, Cloud Atlas, and The Song of Achilles). Namely: Curt and Blaine, the American ex-boyfriends, are both implausible caricatures. Obinze’s character is never explored as three-dimensionally as Ifemelu’s. And the book’s length (588 pages in paperback) is filled out by a few too many tedious dinner parties.

I’m intrigued to check out Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, a classic 1948 novel which receives prominent tribute in Americanah and even leads to a plot-advancing kiss.