DREAM COUNT by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Review by Svenja Sund
This month our Book Club read Dream
Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and the experience sparked a very lively discussion. The novel, ambitious in scope and emotionally layered, follows four women whose lives intersect through friendship, family ties, ambition, loss, and the haunting pursuit of dreams. Adichie weaves a narrative that blends personal histories with observations of their lives in Africa and abroad in the United States.
The novel is structured around four central characters— Chia, Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor— each with her own internal world and narrative. Through them, Adichie explores themes of identity, trauma, gender expectations, power, and the fragile architecture of hope. While the plot moves between continents and shifts through multiple timelines, the core of the novel rests firmly on the emotional journeys of these women. Even though all four stories are distinct to each episode’ s protagonist, their struggles and triumphs echo one another and connect the book as a whole.
Chia, introduced first, seems the most difficult character in the early part of the novel. Her narrative oscillates between self-reflection and self-doubt, often complicated by the numerous men she references throughout her chapters. Several members in our club felt that Chia“ mentioned too many men,” to the point that it occasionally overshadowed her personal development. Her reliance on male attention became a repeated pattern that some of us found irritating, while others viewed it as a regular and understandable process for a woman of her age. Regardless of interpretation, Chia’ s story provided ample ground for debate.
In contrast, the second character, Zikora, emerged as a Book Club favorite. Her chapters are the most grounded, emotionally authentic, and quietly powerful. Zikora’ s strength is not flashy but steady, shaped by resilience rather than aggression. She was the one woman that seemed capable of a long-term relationship with a man, and one kept hoping for a happy end. In the end, she was the key figure to show how love helps heal a conflicting relationship between mothers and daughters.
The third character, Kadiatou, prompted some of the most intense reactions. Her’ s is the novel’ s most brutal and awful storyline, an event so harrowing that it elicited genuine shock and sorrow for some of us readers. Everyone sympathized deeply with her, not only because of what she endured, but because of how her trauma was handled. Especially since it is based on a real incident. Adichie depicts Kadiatou’ s pain with both sensitivity and unflinching realism. Several members noted that she was the most realistic or maybe even the naive one out of the three women. She was the only one without an academic education but seemed to be the smartest in how she handled her fate.
Omelogor, the fourth character, occupies a more complicated moral space. Brilliant, strategic, and driven, she is undeniably smart— perhaps the sharpest mind in the book. But this intelligence is intertwined with a hunger for power that sometimes borders on manipulation. Omelogor is a fascinating character because she defies easy categorization. She forces readers to question where ambition ends and ruthlessness begins, and whether power can ever be pursued without consequence. Her storyline added a political and ethical dimension that enriched the broader narrative.
Overall, Dream Count offered our Book Club a compelling blend of emotional complexity, social insights into the lives of West African women, and vivid character development.
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