Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney

The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney is a comic novel about Nnenna, a half-Nigerian teenager living in modern-day Manchester with her mother Joanie. As Nnenna approaches womanhood she starts trying to connect with her Igbo-Nigerian culture. Her once close and tender relationship with her mother becomes strained as she asks probing questions about her father who she`s never met and whom her mother who refuses to discuss. Each chapter begins with a biblical quote which harks back to the beginning of Maurice and Joanie`s relationship - meeting in a church group are in a cafe in Cambridge - but is really Nnenna`s diary headings which she is trying to hide from her mother`s prying eyes. Nnenna is asking big questions of how to `be` when she doesn`t know who she is as Joanie wonders, how to truly love when she has never been loved? Okechukwu Nzelu brings us a novel about two women, big questions and lots of laughter in a unique and distinctive new voice.