Photo by Jedidah M
THE AUTHOR
“I’d always loved telling stories as a child, whether that was making up stories for my sister and I at night with our doors open or writing short stories on our family’s first desktop. I think there’s also an element of being Nigerian that means we are natural storytellers – whether that’s stories about other people or about ourselves, we love to set the scene, name the characters and let whatever the center of the tale is, unfold,” reveals Ore Agbaje-Williams of her natural talent and inclination, which was further fostered by her parents, who supported her love of the art and made sure that she had been reading from a young age, taking her and her sister to the library every week when they were young children.
THE BOOK
Introducing me to her debut book, The Three of Us, Ore shares, “My blurb, or pitch, would be: Imagine if two of your favourite people hated each other. This is the conun- drum, the wife in The Three of Us faces, as one afternoon, between various bottles of wine, the bubbling tension between her best friend and her husband finally rises to the surface, both sure that they know her best. But who really gets to decide what the truth is? And what happens if we don’t know ourselves best?”
Ore recounts really struggling to find her own voice as a writer before the idea for The Three of Us emerged, after a conversation with her best friend, Grace about someone she was seeing at the time. “The characters and story just came out, it felt so much more enjoyable and natural that any of the previous ideas. At its core, I think The Three of Us is about how we see each other, who gets to define truth and what we’ll do to protect what we think is right.”
THE CREATION
“It sounds somewhat clicheÌ and perhaps like it’s been said a lot, but I wanted to see people like myself in a story that wasn’t about race or pain and I wanted to read conversa- tions that reminded me of the way my friends and I spoke. Something that’s meant a lot to me in seeing people’s responses to the book is particularly how some Nigerian readers are really enjoying and engaging with the specific aspects of Nigerian culture that I’ve included.”
The creation of the book was aided by two exceptional editors ZÌŒeljka MarosÌŒevicÌ and Sally Kim, as well as an incredibly intelligent and astute agent, Niki Chang. “The one thing that they all did, that I believe made this novel even better than when I first wrote it, was make me ask questions,” remembers Ore. “Why this day, why these people, why this relationship, why this story? Answering those questions really helped me to make the three char- acters feel as real as possible. I like to think of it a little like I had a lump of clay and then myself, my agent and editors really helped to sculpt it.” The author also wrote this book quite quickly in a sense because it was during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November 2020 and the discipline of having to sit and write at least something every day really forced her to just let out whatever she was thinking on the page.
THE INFLUENCES
In terms of influences, Ore reveals that she loves the blend of humour and culture in Teju Cole’s Every Day is For the Thief, and the exceptionally funny and dry writing of authors like Curtis Sittenfeld, Katherine Heiny and Kiley Reid. “I also loved the very realistic depictions of friendship found in television shows like Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and Issa Rae’s Insecure,” she adds.
THE CHALLENGES
“I’d been an editor previously, so being edited was a whole new experience for me, but one that I was grateful for,” notes the author. “I’m so much more aware of how hard it is to be on the writing side of editing and having to put a book together, then take it apart and add and subtract and then put it back together at least three times. It’s certainly worth it but a lot harder than it perhaps sounds. I’d also say that writing anything and spending time on it and then allowing people you don’t know to evaluate and judge it publicly is a challenge, but it’s also a privilege to have something published at all so it’s a balancing act,” she acknowledges.
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Words Nidhi Verma
Date 12-06-2023