Book Title: The Marriage Monitoring Aunties Association
Author: Ola Awonubi
Year of Publication: 2025
Publisher: One More Chapter, a division of HarperCollins Publishers
Reviewed by: Oriyomi Anthony
Synopsis
All Folasade Sodipo had to show for an over two-decade stint in the dating pool were a string of broken relationships and an array of unsuitable exes. Now aged fifty and despite being single shamed by the Marriage Monitoring Aunties Association (MMAA), she was determined to stop worrying about marriage and focus on her career and service to God. A chance meeting with Jimi Taylor soon put Sade’s resolve to test and though wary, she gave the relationship a chance. However, a potpourri of her values, insecurities and other pressure almost ended the union before it even took wings.
Review
Although the book’s title already gives an inkling into its focus, it got me curious all the same. Why? Because there’s a preponderance of monitoring spirit associations in Nigeria: those who track other people to see if they have achieved what they ought to have achieved at the arbitrary time set for them. So, we have the “Womb Watchers Association” whose specialty is to track the stomachs of newlywed women for pregnancy. We also have the success monitors, who watch to see if an individual has gone to school, got a job, bought a car, etc., at the same time as his or her peers.
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The most notorious of these monitors is the Marriage Monitoring Aunties Association. This is the coalition of aunties who, in Ola Awonubi’s words, “lie in wait at birthdays, christenings, and weddings to spring out from corners on unsuspecting single women and quiz them about their single status, ask them the kind of uncomfortable questions they do not ask their single sons, and ridicule them for not being married.” This unique crop of monitors is so involved in other people’s affairs that they forget the logs of wood in their own eyes. That is why Aunty Gbemi could comfortably ridicule Sade for being single at 50 even though she herself was deserted by her husband in the UK to raise their children alone.
And while there is an increasing awareness of the need for humans not to fit others into repressive boxes, the attitude has become deeply engrained within society that even younger generations have unwittingly embraced it. Which is why Ola Awonubi’s contribution is an important one.
What worked?
The themes.
The overarching theme in MMAA is society’s obsession with shaming people who are delayed in various ways: from marriage to having children to going to school, or getting a job, but most especially marriage. This obsession, rather than being innocuous, is the cause of so much heartache, low confidence and worry for people on the receiving end of it. It leads some to take extreme steps such as marrying the first man who asks them out or other more harmful decisions. The Church, which, is supposed to shield and proffer solutions to Christian singles, instead encourages them to accept their singleness as God’s will for them, exacerbating rather than eliminating the problem.
Other themes include hypocrisy, redemption, love, acceptance, the pervasive attitude of single shaming at societal events, and the dynamics of parent-children relationships, especially mother-daughter relationships.
Protagonist
I liked the fact that the protagonist was a fifty-year-old woman. Most late marriage stories usually focus on women in their late thirties to early forties, almost as if there are no fifty- or sixty-year-old singles. Folasade was refreshingly different because of her age bracket because she also had other issues that younger women did not have. Fibroids, menopause and an ever-declining probability of bearing children. Awonubi touched on each of these issues to paint a realistic picture of what being single is like for older women.
What did not work?
Character/plot development
While Awonubi examined the main theme from different angles she did not dwell so much on the central antagonists, which are the monitoring aunties. As I read, I kept wondering if the title was Marriage Monitoring Mother Association or Marriage Monitoring Aunty Association, as Sade’s main antagonists were her mother and her aunt, Aunty Gbemi. Not that other monitoring aunties were not mentioned but Awonubi did more of telling than showing us these aunties in action.
The dynamics between Sade and her sister, Kike, also felt a bit one-dimensional and lacklustre, almost as if they were strangers brought together by Sade’s unmarried status. The reader did not get a feel of how Sade felt about her sister and vice versa. The same with Sade’s relationship with her friends, Samantha and Vicky. It was all so one-dimensional, repetitive and emotionless.
Editing
In terms of editing, the book could benefit from one more round of proofreading as it has a few errors and inconsistencies.
Conclusion
Amidst the aunties haranguing Sade about her quickly evaporating marriage options, there was a divergent voice, Remi Adekoya, who counselled and encouraged her to look beyond societal constraints and choose happiness for herself first before others. Everyone who reads this book is faced with choices too. One, they must choose if they want to live their lives by the opinions of monitoring associations and two, they must decide whether they want to be a hypocritical Aunty Gbemi or an uplifting Aunty Remi.