Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun

(a Book Review Coming 6 Years Late)

I’ve got a confession to make: I’ve got a sweet tooth and it more or less informed my buying of this book. It would be a sin for me to see a book with such a whimsically sweet title and not buy in.

Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun is the second novel by Sarah Ladipo Manyika. It’s about the life of Morayo Da Silva, a woman living in San Francisco on the cusp of her 75th birthday. Single, intelligent — a retired Professor of English — and carefree, Morayo enjoys chance encounters with strangers, as well as speeding through the streets in her beloved Porsche, Buttercup.

For anyone expecting a dramatic revelation or widening story arc, this book would leave them disappointed — in a good way. Putting it in context, what’s really more to the life of a 75-year-old retired woman? What has she not seen? What has she not done? Sometimes we tend to seek the dramatic that we forget how simple and uncomplicated life can be. We forget how satisfying simple pleasures are. We forget that regardless of one’s age in life, there’s still so much to live for and savour. Manyika’s book is one such reminder.

In Morayo, Manyika paints the portrait of an empowered self-aware woman with a wealth of experiences from living in places like Jos and Lagos in Nigeria, then in India and San Francisco where she’s living out the final phase of her life. Morayo recounts her life as the young wife of a charismatic older diplomat, hosting events, and being the dutiful, submissive wife in the ballroom and bedroom. She misses Lagos and Jos, and flirts with the idea of going back ‘home’. She shares on her sensuality as well — her sexual dissatisfaction with her husband and eventual encounter with Antonio.

It’s liberating. Morayo’s story, while beginning towards the twilight of her life, works its way back and forth delightfully. Her growing dissatisfaction with her husband got to a point where she had to leave when she discovered she was a second wife. As a naïve, subservient woman, she grew into one who took control of her life and lived it on her terms — well, till an accident put her in a hospital and made her more dependent than she would have liked.

Written from the first-person point of view, Mayinka employs other characters in telling Morayo’s story. From the Indian Sunshine to the homeless Sage, Morayo makes an impression on everyone she meets that cause them to dwell on their encounters the same way we do when we meet someone who seemingly forces their way into our lives and leaves a mental sticky note. Through them, the reader would catch a whiff of Morayo’s loneliness — in her desire to establish some rapport with an official from the DMV over the phone, to looking forward to the Chinese postman’s visit. You wonder: why didn’t she have kids? Does she regret it? Questions we’re prone to have given our reality as Africans but the protagonist owns her life in a way that suggests she has what she wants.

So what’s the point of a book that doesn’t seem to go anywhere? It’s a question some readers would ask. I’ll say that Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun isn’t really a journey. If anything, it’s more like a portrait that lends itself to interpretation in diverse ways.

Manyika’s book while oscillating between being cheery and contemplative is a simple one. Its real strength is in the characters’ personalities — some of which she brings to bear in so few words. As the pivot, Morayo does well as a loveable character, reminding one of that hipster aunt or grandmother who, rather than have her light flicker out, chooses to go out with a bang.

That said, Sarah has a new book out, titled: Between Starshine and Clay… I logged into my FB page an hour ago and saw her post — the most exciting news of my moring so far. It’s one reason I decided to publish a review of one of her books, as I look forward to getting my hands on this one too.