Not So Terrible People review: Where the Living and Dead Dance in Nana Sule’s Gripping Debut

Nana Sule’s debut novel, Not So Terrible People, is a collection of 11 speculative and mysterious tales, a bold mix of ghosts, angels, jinn, and women, that explores friendship, love, regret, loss, and heartbreak. This book almost tattoos its forehead with a warning: do not read it at night unless your curiosity to know what comes next outweighs the nightmares it may bring.

In this collection, Nana invites readers into a world where the lines between the living and the dead blur, where angels and jinn weave through human lives, and where women carry the crushing weight of cultural expectations, spiritual battles, and private griefs. Centered around Abuja, Kaduna, and Kano, these stories are deeply rooted in Northern Nigeria yet open a door into a universe where the unseen tugs constantly at the seen. Nana’s voice emerges tender yet unflinching as she navigates the liminal spaces between life and death, love and loss.

One of the most striking threads in this book is the idea of human greed and longing, even beyond the grave. Nana’s dead are not mere ghosts to haunt the living; they are metaphors for restless souls unwilling to let go of ambition, grudges, or desires. They remind us of unfinished business; the relationships we mishandled, the lives we clung to too tightly. It’s a haunting reflection of how often we mistake possession for love and permanence for purpose.

Nana’s writing leans into magical realism, presenting fantastical elements with quiet confidence. Her use of symbolism, especially the dead returning as metaphors for unresolved trauma and desire, is striking. The imagery lingers between shadows that whisper, spaces thick with memory, and women caught between silence and survival.

The first two stories, “Amal” and “Owanyi,” show us the greed of human beings who cling to life even after leaving it. Amal pleads with the angels to let her return so she can expose Alhaji’s secrets to Rhoda, revealing that he was the hand behind her death, pretending to mourn her while shedding crocodile tears. Amal’s unfinished ambition and striking passion for the bookstore they ran together remind us how much she still felt she had to “chop” from life.

In “Owanyi,” a lady returns two years after her death and finds her way into a man’s heart. When he insists on meeting her parents to get their knots tied, he learns the surreal truth– his lover has long been dead, and her family takes him to her grave.

The third story unfolds through Ohunene’s diary as she recounts her life in Ozevehe’s house, a place once full of love but now a hot iron, everyone close to her mourns her for enduring. Once so in tune, Ohunene and Ozevehe’s marriage has withered. Following a miscarriage she had long prayed against, Ohunene endures the venom of living with a mother-in-law desperate for a grandchild and a husband who storms out over trivial matters, leaving her to act as though nothing has happened when he returns.

I applaud Nana for exploring the hardship of a marriage where love has withered and loyalty is one-sided. Ohunene’s womanising husband gives her neither the attention nor the emotional nourishment she deserves, forcing her to live in a house but outside a relationship. This reflects the silent suffering of many women caught in the web of societal expectations that demand they endure neglect for the sake of duty, or to avoid taboo and disownment.

In one story, Ometere, a nurse abandoned by her husband for not fulfilling his “japa” dreams through her medical profession, finds her night shifts painted as morally suspicious. Nana portrays her interactions with male colleagues during her night shifts as a taboo, even a stain on her profession. Why should her workplace, a space of care and duty, be subject to such judgment? I am unapologetically against this framing, as it reinforces a double standard that subjects women’s public conduct to a harsher moral barometer. Why must a woman’s workplace become a place where her virtue is questioned?

While I commend Sule’s debut, it’s important to note that Islamic teaching holds that the dead cannot return. However, the book’s use of this idea may serve as a fictional device to explore spiritual imbalance, human greed, and grief. But attributing angels to a specific gender is explicitly rejected in the Qur’an–even in fiction. Sule’s use of feminine pronouns for Izra’il (“she,” “her,” “Mistress”) contrasts sharply with the Qur’an’s rebuke of pre-Islamic Arabs for calling angels “daughters of Allah” without evidence:

“They have made the angels, who are servants of the Most Merciful, females. Did they witness their creation? Their testimony will be recorded, and they will be questioned.” (Qur’an 43:19)

Not So Terrible People is a bold and layered debut that dares to ask uncomfortable questions about love, loss, and the weight of societal expectations, especially on women. I can’t help but smile at Nana’s creativity in turning the nincompoop Ozevehe into a rabbit, not through death or kidnapping on the train, but by giving him an end in a realm he never imagined. I even wished she turned him into something worse.