Understanding the influence of love

A review of Nellie Onwuchekwa’s book, The Influence of Love: Life Episodes of Emotional Complexities and Resolutions.

Love is perhaps one of today’s most important emotions in the whole universe. That probability underpins its frequency in various works of art, music, poetry, drama and prose.

Nellie Onwuchekwa’s debut book, The Influence of Love: Life Episodes of Emotional Complexities and Resolution has, however, added a new dimension to the story.

The beauty of the work lies in its style, simplicity and sensibilities in handling sensitive issues. Written in free prose, it is a 10-episodic collection of real life events told through third person and first person format.

This interplay provides better insight into the struggles of real persons faced with tough choices to make in the face of love surrounded by thorny situations.

In episode four, The God Factor in Emotional Conflict, the daughter of a pastor is a victim of rape. As she and her family come to terms with the reality, the question is: How does one handle it? Will the baby be aborted? How would they face the stigmatisation and hard knocks from supposedly sympathetic church members?

In another, Emotional Triangles and Conflicts, the major character shares her struggle and pains with betrayal by her husband after 20 years of childlessness in marriage. Ironically, she becomes a mother by her estranged husband who forcefully takes her the night before he finally threw her out of the matrimonial home.

The story ends with the birth of twin boys at the golden age of 50 and the character getting married to the person who provided her shelter when her husband threw her out on a cold, rainy day: a friend of her husband.

But the stories are not only narrated by women through love-tinted lenses. In episode two, Love: Strengthened in Weakness, a widower and father of three tells of his own struggle in dealing with a woman five years older, caring, but uninterested in his children.

Taking a vacation with his children, as well as her threat to ensure he loses his job if not taken along for the vacation, helps him see the other woman for who she truly is and lifts the veil over his emotions.

Episode three, When Love Feels So Wrong is also told from a male perspective. The author allows the narrator to tell of his experience in standing up his bride-to be at the altar after he developed cold feet from guilt.

His break up with his god-fearing fiancée who refused pre-marital sex and test the fertility waters by getting pregnant before marriage, became a platform for the rebound relationship with his ex-fiancée’s best friend.

She got pregnant and a quick date was set for the marriage, but he ended up calling it quits as he developed cold feet and succumbed to his family’s refusal to simply get it done with.

The emotions which drove him to another’s arms, now became his torturer. The story leaves the reader wondering how it would end:  a betrayed fiancée, an unwed, pregnant bride in a wedding that never took place, seem to be part of a high fictional storyline for Nollywood.

But it is not. The characters are real and in every episode, the author allows them to share their stories and sift through the shaft to work through their emotional entanglements.

Onwuchekwa’s book also reveal characters’ struggle with fear of infidelity emerging from the age gap between an older man and a much younger woman.

Their attempt at resolving their differences through coming to terms with their realities, enhances the book’s professionalism in dealing with sensitive issues.

Beyond human relationships, the God factor in dissecting the concept of love through the narratives, provides a balance in a world where humans’ search for God only in troubled times.

The book’s preface and emotionalpiggy bank at the end of each episode encapsulates the need for fidelity and enables the reader to reflect and process emotions before taking a plunge.

The Influence of Love broadens the reader’s perspectives and complexities of love and emotions, while strengthening the importance of principles, values and mores in crisis resolution.