An Unusual Grief by Yewande Omotoso

At the heart of it, An Unusual Grief is about survival, not the neat, inspirational kind, but the messy kind that doesn’t always make sense.

An Unusual Grief opens with weight. From the first page, we’re inside Mojisola’s grief, and it’s not easy to read. The beginning feels dense, but that heaviness makes sense, showing us that grief is never a straight line.

If you stay with it, the story unfolds into something raw, bold, and deeply moving.

Premise

An Unusual Grief dives into topics many African homes avoid: mental illness, suicide, anxiety, and identity crises. It doesn’t shy away from asking: how do you explain death to a child? Or how does a woman keep functioning when her own mind is pulling her under?

In Nigeria, where therapy still feels like a taboo and “just pray about it” is the default advice, this kind of honesty hits differently. The author was smart not to set it here, because if we’re being real, a Nigerian woman openly going for therapy or finding healing in unconventional ways would have been written off as “unserious”, “possessed”, or even “privileged.”

Thoughts

Mojisola, as a character, is striking. She isn’t the glowing, fulfilled mother we’re used to reading about. For her, pregnancy brings indifference and even aversion, and later her daughter wrestles with her own mental health struggles. It’s a side of motherhood and womanhood we rarely see explored so honestly.

After her daughter’s tragic death, Mojisola tries to heal in unexpected ways, through art, through BDSM, through breaking free from society’s suffocating idea of respectability. This part is bound to raise eyebrows, but it works.

It shows how grief can push you into spaces you never imagined, and how reclaiming your body and choices can be a form of survival. The novel also highlights something we rarely admit out loud: how often loved ones blame themselves after suicide, replaying what they should have seen or should have done.

The pain doesn’t just belong to the one who passed; it lingers, reshaping the lives of those left behind. Interestingly, while all eyes are on Mojisola, it is revealed that the father, too, struggles quietly with depression, reminding us how mental illness can hide in plain sight, unspoken, until tragedy forces it into the open.

Of course, the novel has its flaws. Some parts drag; the prose gets too wordy in places, slowing the pace. And while the daughter is central to the story, she sometimes feels more like a mirror for her mother’s grief than a fully developed character in her own right. Still, that thinness also mirrors the way death reduces people into memories and fragments.

Verdict

At the heart of it, An Unusual Grief is about survival, not the neat, inspirational kind, but the messy kind that doesn’t always make sense. It blends themes of grief, motherhood, mental illness, art, and sexuality in ways that are jarring but necessary.

For Nigerians tired of stories that gloss over the hard truths, this book is refreshingly honest, even when it makes you uncomfortable.