Q&A with Nnamdi Ehirim

1. Congratulations on the publication of your second novel, The Brevity of Beautiful Things. Tell us about the title and why you chose it.
Nnamdi Ehirim: Thank you. With titles, I try to go with something that would capture readers’ attention as well as the essence of the story being told. This particular story is really about my exploration of the fleeting nature of friendships, the fleeting nature of happiness in friendships that last for a long time and the other emotions that keep friendships going long after happiness has left.

2. Your debut novel Prince of Monkeys was a coming-of-age story. How would you say your writing has evolved?
I am a lot less selfish with my writing. While writing my first novel, I was my primary audience and wrote exactly what I wanted to read at that moment. With my second novel, I am a bit more considerate of my readers and what I think they want to read. I am also less interested in the philosophy of living and more consumed by the drama in relationships.

3. The novel opens with a character who is best described as a hopeless romantic. Why did you choose to start your novel with this character?
I started the story with who it came to me with and introduced the other characters as they arrived. At the time, I had not written any fiction in about two years but I found myself rationalising the loss and heartbreak from a failed relationship and that manifested itself in a character who began rationalising loss and heartbreak in a very extreme way—denial.

4. “The paradox of loving is that we learn to love perfectly from the people who are imperfect for us”. How true is this in modern-day relationships where the parties are less forgiving and more intentional about the kind of people they want to be with?
I believe the more we love and experience people in close relationships, the more we get a clearer filter of what we want and don’t want from love. So naturally, with each close relationship that fails or is sustained, we are learning to love the next person better.

5. In the novel, we are introduced to Ufedo and Iman—two unpredictable female characters who themselves are on an emotional rollercoaster. What does it take for a man to capture female voices so accurately?
I observe women who I find interesting. I also try to make an effort to listen to women. When I’m writing stories, I am very interested in listening to similar experiences of women around me. In this story, this included things like asking female friends to speak to me about when they were first conscious of their desire for others and others’ desire for them, how they dealt with loss of intimacy in friendships, how they dealt with parental infidelity and all the other points of conflict that we see in the story.

6. Although the novel is set in different times, you take us back to the complexities of boarding school. Did you draw inspiration from your own experiences or did you have to research to create such a vivid and relatable portrayal of this setting?
I went to boarding school and had a relatively good experience. A number of my close friends today are people I met in boarding school. So the concept of boarding school friendships evolving into proper adult relationships that become complex and require more thoughtfulness to hold on to was drawn from personal feelings. But the actual details of boarding school experience in this book was drawn from a wide range of stories I have heard from people I know who went to all sorts of boarding schools.

7. Some parents send their children to boarding schools because they believe their children will become better behaved and more disciplined. Is this true of the boarding school experience in Nigeria?
I believe this is true at the core of it. There was a generation of Nigerian parents that believed outsourcing parenting to the perceived structure of a boarding school delivered better results. I think this is true for some children but not for most because the parental oversight in most boarding schools is too impersonal.

8. Each chapter is driven by a character’s story. Did you think this will enhance the readers enjoyment of the story?
This was what the story demanded. I wanted to show how the same events in our relationships can have different valid perspectives depending on who is looking at it, how expectations can be imbalanced and how miscommunication can take root. After this, I hoped and prayed that the outcome would enhance the reader’s enjoyment of the story.

9. You capture camaraderie so well, case in point, Faramade, Kamara, Julius and Senior Aluya. Do boys thrive better in same sex friendship groups?
I think time, proximity and open communication are the key ingredients to a thriving friend group regardless of the genders involved.

10. Some people have said they can imagine this story on the big screen, have you thought about that as well?
Naturally. From a very selfish position, I am always eager to see how people receive and interpret my stories, so seeing a filmmaker adapt my telling of the story into theirs would be an incredible privilege.