The Helpmate - by Stephen Oladipo (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This is a well-orchestrated prose-work, fiction. Although events in the narratives are mirrored to reflect real life occurrences. It is a tragic story. A tale of struggles, hardship, fortune, survival and death. The Book has fifteen chapters in total running into 108 pages with intriguing starting ending narratives which qualifies the story as comical tragedy.

It touches on some cultural demeanors of people from certain tribes in Africa (Nigeria as a focus) where extra-marital affair is silently prevalent despite legality to engage in polygamy. The book: Helpmate muckrakes the evil of broken-homes and parental negligence on young adults. The strenuous roles of fending for self as a child and taking up the responsibility of an adult in the process of survival is pivotal incident within the pages.

Man's love for beast is not always without the influence of what they could produce. This statement is justified by the roles the Dog: 'Riro' plays on Dara's path to fulfillment. These unique roles have usually been sanctioned to be the reason why many pet-owners (especially in Africa) own their Dogs and cater for them and not really because of unaligning love for these animals. The story justifies this more with the dramatic risk of life efforts 'Riro' (the Dog) had to make to preserve Dara's life whle the Dog owner-Dara could not be said to attempt similar efforts to the turn of substituting his own life to rescue the Dog when her own (the Dog's) critical situation beckoned.

We dream, we hope, we expect with longings in life, but we do not know what tomorrow holds. This is explained by the unexpected and sudden end of Riro. For this sudden and unexpected end of Dara's lover bring him back to a zero level of fulfillment, bruising his desires like the impact of the sun upon a fallen leave...