26a- A REVIEW by Tunde Aladese

Diana Evans’s book, ‘26a’, appears on the surface to be a story about the relationship between a pair of twins, Georgia and Bessi, the tale spreading out from the focus on them to deal with their entire family- a mixed race family with a British father, a Nigerian mother and four girls- Bel, Georgia, Bessi and Kemy.

The book explores the issue of dependent relationships, following the twins from a childhood of silent communication, as they coin their lifetime catchphrases –it’s good, eve- and share memories until they grow into womanhood and differences that can no longer be ignored. As they grow, the experiment with independence, only getting their toes wet, but it becomes more and more obvious that this freedom to fly is something only one of them wants, while the other dreads it. A slow acceptance of the need to find a life of one’s own leads to their abandonment of their dreams of a flapjack empire as they seek different paths suited to their personalities. How successful this separation ends up being, the reader can find out for his or herself.

The tension in the family is one of the first things the book introduces us to as the first consultation we find the twins having in the sacred land of their attic room is a discussion on whether their parents should get divorced or not. The marriage of their parents, in some ways, parallels the theme of relationships born of dependency. When the couple meets, they both feel like outsiders within the environment they find themselves in- their father Aubrey a fresh expatriate on assignment in Lagos, their mother Ida a runaway from Benin. Desperate for anything they can get, they cling to each other in their loneliness without really knowing each other and the result is inevitable as we find them years down the line barely tolerating each other, it comes as no surprise that their marriage grows into a situation of impatience, scorn and tension. The social and cultural differences between them grow more glaring by the day as Ida refuses to conform and Aubrey refuses to understand. Years later, Ida is still clinging to dreams of her youth as an anchor and talking to her absent mother. She has not made any successful attempts to try and integrate with the community she is living in, although towards the latter part of the book, she does begin to take some steps in that direction.

Although set for the most part in England, the book takes occasional forays into the world of Ida’s home country, Nigeria. It takes us on an interesting journey into Ida’s escape from home, revealing for the first time the youth and optimism behind the moody woman we first meet. Later in the book the entire family takes a trip home and I was unable to find the merit this visit added to the story. With the exception of giving the children a few scares, the three years the family spends in Nigeria seem to pass in a blur and they are back to England in no time. The pace and development of the story do not seem to have been greatly advanced by this interlude.

Diana Evans’s style of writing is explicit in its attention to the thoughts behind the actions of her characters and the regularity with which these thoughts are disjointed puts on them a stamp of reality. She parallels the emotional roller coaster of the family relationships with the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, as a marriage captures the imagination of a nation and is constantly chronicled on TV, avidly watched by people, including the characters in the book. Exploring the emotions and reactions of the characters, even in the minds of the children, is a strong part of the book. You feel the palpable terror that lies in something as alarmingly basic as a drunken, angry parent.

I moved through the book quickly which in some ways was a bad thing because, in gaining momentum, I kept expecting to be taken somewhere but the book ended up in a place I could see it heading towards from about halfway through the book. Sometimes the book felt more like a collection of events in the lives of a family than a tale and it seemed like I was just waiting for the inevitable to happen and enjoying the quality of the writing on the way.