This was a really heavy read.

A commendable debut

The Tiny Things Are Heavier is a quiet, emotionally rich novel about grief, family, migration, and the weight of everything we don’t say out loud. The story follows a Nigerian mother and daughter navigating their fractured relationship after tragedy, across two countries and many unspoken hurts.

I loved how real the characters felt. Complex, flawed, loving, and sometimes emotionally stuck. Okonkwo captures the immigrant experience with so much honesty especially the emotional dislocation that often lingers even when you're physically settled.

This isn’t a fast-paced book, but it’s deeply affecting. It reminded me of how much meaning lives in the everyday moments, the pauses, the unsaid things. A truly moving read. The pacing and plot could have done with a bit of work, but it still touched me.

The author - Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo lives in the US (having studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and now taking a PhD in Creative Writing at Florida State University) but counts home as Lagos, Nigeria and her novel is inspired by her own experiences – with a protagonist Sommy (Somkelchukwu) also from Lagos and also studying at Graduate School in the US.

The novel opens with her arrival in Iowa (after a connecting flight from Chicago) to start University – having moved to the US only only two weeks after a failed suicide attempt by her brother Mezie (Mezie having struggled to find a job in Nigeria, moved to Norway and found a girlfriend Elin, only to be deported for travelling around Europe on false papers) – Mezie since then refusing to answer her messages and she believes attempting (with some success) to guilt trip about her decision not to postpone her travel.

The author has said of her motivations for the novel: “I come from a lineage of postcolonial writers—Achebe, Emecheta, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, so my impulse is to write about society. I, of course, want to tell a good story first and foremost. With The Tiny Things are Heavier I wanted to write about the stark realities of being a young Nigerian person without means navigating an ancient and enormous system designed to keep one oppressed. I wanted to look at the different dimensions of class, the spectrum of privilege. And I wanted to do it in real and urgent ways by depicting the multi impacts of living under these conditions through the relationships that form and dissolve in the novel.”

And Sommy (the close third party point of view character for the full novel) immediately struggles with fitting in as a new student, as an immigrant – at times observing or experiencing microaggressions, and with the added pressure of the Mezie fallout – small things which cumulatively weigh down on her as the title would suggest.

Over time, she falls rather passively into two relationships – neither it is clear to the reader entirely wise even in isolation: one with her rather more confident fellow Nigerian roommate Bayo, the other with Bryan who approaches her in a park – Bryan has a rich white American mother but a Nigerian father who he has never met (he returning to Nigeria as soon as Bryan came along) – but the combination inevitably disastrous.

In this first section I am not and will not be the only person to perhaps think of Brandon Taylor’s “Real Life” – and some perhaps rather over-earnest writing and characters, here not helped by their more art based studies.

A second part begins again with a flight arrival – this time in Lagos as a newly reconciled Sommy and Bryan arrive there: both looking for further reconciliation with their families:

Sommy with Mezie (although that gets off to a very rocky start – the, at least for me very self-centred Sommy both upset that he does not give her the apology she seems to think she deserves for his blanking of her while she was in the US and again for me hypocritically judging him for seeming to maintain a relationship with Elin while also carrying on with his longer term on-off Nigerian girlfriends).

Bryan both with what he considers the country of his origins and with his long-lost father – although both encounters (one on-going during the trip, one a one-off visit) fall well short of his expectations – and both of which he reacts to with at best limited amounts of grace and maturity (increasingly judgmentally giving up on the former, while unrealistically convinced he can restore the dementia-afflicted latter).

And when a drunk driving incident threatens calamity for the family – but one easily dealt with by the use of the very money and privilege which Sommy can benefit from in Lagos but which is entirely absent (unless by Bryan-proxy) in the US – Bryan proves equally but oppositely aware and judgmental of class/money/privilege in another country (and blind to it in his own country and life).

A third part has Sommy and Bryan back in the US – Bryan now on the verge of being a successful and published novelist but with a breach between them which first therapy and then marriage form at best a very temporary repair, but one punctured permanently by a confessional essay which Bryan publishes (and which is reproduced in the text).

And the fourth and final section again begins with an airport arrival – Sommy returning to Nigeria to make both a new life and amends for past issues.

Overall, this is a novel which grows in depth and complexity as it goes – really taking off I think towards the end of the second section. It was however one of those novels where I did feel that political themes, literary resonances and the core characters were more real and meaningful to the author than to me – although if it were Booker listed (and I do think it’s a good possibility) one I would enjoy revisiting with other readers as I think those discussions would bring it more to life.

It’s hard to believe that this is the author’s first novel. Her writing floats off the page, into your mind, and swirls and whirls around until finally settling, but not without having done something to you first.
And that something - for me - I feel I can sum up in one word.
Resonance.
It would I suppose be useful to expand on that word.
Despite me being white and Sommy being Black.
Despite me being middle aged and Sommy being half my age.
Despite me having lived the entirety of my life in the UK and Sommy living in Nigeria and then in the US.
Despite all this, her story resonated - resonates still.
I was completely drawn in to Sommy’s meandering journey to find her sense of self.
Of seeing herself seemingly only existing in relation to others.
Of feeling somehow lacking.
Of not knowing who she is or what she wants.
In many ways this is a universal experience - we are all on our own journeys and there can be some hard lessons to learn along the way. But although a universal experience it’s also really particular to ourselves. There are some lessons we learn that we may never choose to share with anyone. But, for better or for worse they shape us.
And this is why I resonated with Sonny because, though her journey is very different to what mine has been (and I guess still is), it feels like she has been written in such a way as to embody the lived experience of many women who have come before, and of many women still to come.
A beautiful book.