review of araceli aipoh's no sense of limit

I have, since childhood, being an ardent mystery fan. After reading mystery books, or seeing the movies, I go home thinking I have visited another world. Unfortunately, these mysteries come from Hollywood or American writers. Sydney Sheldon is my favourite in that terrain, because I couldn’t quite picture the ‘real things’ I wanted in the ones dashed out by Nigerian authors, till Araceli Aipoh’s No Sense of Limit hit the shelves in 2005. Sure, I didn’t get it then. But when I did in 2006, I concluded that a novel of real ambition, like Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small of Things has finally landed on the Nigerian soil, with a heart that might rival Dan Brown’s and America’s mysteries that have engulfed our bookshops.

In this highly Nigerianised novel, although too experimental, to be tagged a Nigerian novel, astonishingly written by a Filipino, married to a Nigerian, one is drabbed between the world of the wealthy Lagosians, torn apart by spite, betrayal, hatred and power. Like a Hollywood flick, Ms Aipoh takes the reader into the world of a wealthy bank chairman, Gabriel Coker whose two daughters Elizabeth and Victoria (named after the royal Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria who was crowned the empress of India in 1887) thrive devilishly in siblings’ rivalry that leads to betrayal and death. In the midst of this brouhaha, there are the other interesting characters that people the story and these amazing characters make this novel what it is: a spell-binding thriller, filled with substance!

No Sense of Limit is a novel that is rich in its characterization, but the plot staggers confusingly and sometimes seems lazy to the reader. But the writer has a firm control over her tone and her dialogue is lushly created that it sustains the tautness of a novel that lives up to the international standard. Undeniably, there is an infusion of the landscape of Sydney Sheldon’s Bloodline, albeit the author has created a niche for herself.

Like Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, Ms Aipoh’s debut novel is luminous and filled with colourful nuggets of information. Her overseas audience might not believe she could have written a more Nigerianised novel, just having spent 18 years in Nigeria, even in the face of the whole hostage-taking, without being narrow-minded. This is a remarkable achievement and readers are going to have this astonishing novel shut open for ever!