416 pp. Published March 4, 2025 by Alfred A. Knopf. Fiction.
First things first: the “dream count” of the title is an allusion to “body count”; younger readers will be familiar with this slang term referring to how many people a person has slept with. In Adichie’s pandemic novel, this reference is mainly about the main character, Chia’s reminiscences about the ones that got away—but is also about the dreams of the other women she is connected to: her friend Zikora, her cousin Omelogor, and her house manager, Kadiatou.
Adichie sets her novel in those bewildering days of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide atmosphere: we all spent those endless days pondering our lives and meaning, and a fair few of us must have thought about whether we had achieved all we wanted. That’s what these four women work through: Chia considers whether she may have missed the love of her life; Zikora, the devout Catholic, thought she would be married by thirty-one; Omelogor chases first money, and then a graduate school dream in the US, and finds herself unfulfilled; and Kadi suffers a series of catastrophes, and then becomes the victim of a terrible crime at work, making her the unwilling centre of an international scandal involving a powerful man.
Dream Count is a novel of women. It’s about love, work, money, the patriarchy, power, immigration, family ties, and yes, life goals and dreams. It’s about disappointment and disillusionment when life doesn’t deliver what we hope for when we’re young and naive—either because we’ve pursued the “wrong” thing (a matter of interpretation), or due to forces we cannot control. But this novel is also about perseverance and endurance, when we find a way to go on and dream new dreams.
Dream Count excels in its presentation of four deeply complex and very different women. It’s occasionally excoriating about the US, demonstrating the disillusionment that migrants to that country often experience. It’s entertaining and cringey about dating and the pursuit of love. It presents what seems to be an excellent solution to the corruption of powerful officials. And, ultimately, Dream Count is a warm and humane portrayal of four women’s lives.
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