In a twist of fate, three women- grandmother, mother and daughter share similar life experiences and travails. Bunmi Oyinsan’s novel, Three Women explores the life of these women through the voice of Oyinkansola Edun, a diary of Esther Aduke Edun, her semi-literate maternal grandmother and an omniscient voice in the prologue and interlogue.

This is a story of three women who try to find the meaning of their existence, especially the grand daughter. Esther Edun believes her daughter’s welfare is the reason for her existence while her daughter, Ibidun sees her new found Christian faith as the purpose for living. Oyinkan also struggles to unveil the mystery of her life till the end of the story. Her determination to discover the purpose of life and the answer to the question: ‘Who am I?’ is the central focus that brings in her predecessors’ story.

The book can be said to be a chronicle of the global woman whose life has been shadowed and made miserable by the male figure in the forms of husbands or fathers. It also describes the path to the loss of innocence and the need to personally discover one’s inherent qualities. The struggle of women especially, wives and mothers, is encapsulated in the book.

The novel also presents an autobiographical account of these three generations of fictional women in the sense that Oyinkan who is the protagonist writes her life history while the grandmother’s diary recounts the life of its writer. This goes on to show that the problems faced by women today are not very different from those faced by women from generations past.

Oyinkan starts the story by recounting her first day in school even while growing up in Lagos with her grandmother who she fondly calls Maami. Her biological father is never revealed until towards the end of the story when she turns thirty-five years old. But she was a child born outside wedlock while her mother was still very young and still in school.

After Maami’s death, Oyinkan had to live with her mother and stepfather, Tonye. While there, she stayed at the boarding house for a while after which she got into trouble with her friend, Timi Amapreye and thereafter, was compelled by the school authorities to become a day student.
Ibidun, who seemed to be ashamed of Oyinkan shyly ordered her to continue to address her as Sisi Ibidun instead of ‘mummy’ as should be the normal case. Thus, Oyinkan felt uncomfortable and unloved while living with her mother coupled with Tonye’s cold treatment of her and her mother’s reference to her as “ my past mistake”.

Kole is described as being hot-tempered, chauvinistic, sentimental and tribalistic, yet caring and loving towards his wife on some occasions. Soon, he mounts pressure on his wife to give birth to more children, but as she is not forthcoming, he ends up impregnating his ex-girlfriend. Oyinkan feels disappointed and soon, after a quarrel, she pack her belongings and moves out of her matrimonial home to her childhood home which she inherited from her late grandmother.

Her multiple marital travails forced her out of her matrimonial home while she is not allowed to see her daughter Ibidun who eventually becomes indoctrinated by her paternal grand mother and cowardly father. The latter made her believe her mother is a witch until she got pregnant by Onyebuchi Orji and had nowhere to go but to Aduke Edun.

The three women, Aduke, Ibidun and Oyinkan lead lives not dissimilar to one another. All of them were born in controversial circumstances with their fathers acting irresponsibly towards them. They all faced matrimonial problems with their husbands impregnating other women. All their husbands seem to be chauvinistic, narrow-minded and bad-tempered. Men are not portrayed in a good light in the story.
The author’s description of old Lagos and Ibadan is captivating and can stir up memories of older people.

However, Oyinsan portrays her protagonist, Oyinkan as an erratic and sometimes irrational person. One minute, she is a decent person and the next minute, she is sleeping with other men for contracts. She does not seem to be able to control herself sometimes, due to pent up emotions and frustrations.
Moreover apart, from the diary which is aptly filled with errors, other parts of the book that are supposed to be in simple straight English also have some typographical errors. For instance, confirmed is spelt as ‘confarmed’, while ‘interlogue’ is used for ‘interlude’.
The novel is an interesting literary work, which can fascinate the reader from the beginning to the end and despite a few lapses, it reads like a thriller.