In Such Tremendous Heat brings together three women whose different lives are shaped by a shared desire: the need to cope, control, or escape.
Amaka has a system: when she loses her father, she goes shopping. After a breakup, she shops. A fight with a friend, well, you guessed it, she shops. It works, until it doesn’t. That slow slide from coping to obsession sits at the heart of Kehinde Fadipe’s debut novel, set against the glittering, high-pressure backdrop of Singapore, where three women, Dara, Lilian and Amaka, are trying to outrun complicated pasts that have no intention of staying where they belong.
Dara is a hard-working woman who believes she can outwork anyone. Her life has always been about her work, the one thing she feels she can control. She has dedicated herself to a big law firm and is on track to become a partner. That certainty begins to fray when a new associate, Lani, is brought in to work with her on the same case, placing them in direct competition for the same position. Dara is heartbroken. She is unsure of her next move.
“If there was one module that was sorely lacking in law school, it was dealing with office politics,” Dara thinks, as she tries to navigate a workplace where her boss, Ian, increasingly favours Lani. Fadipe uses this dynamic to show how easily women’s labour is overlooked in the corporate world, though at times, this feels more stated than fully explored.
People marry for different reasons. Some for love. Others for economic reasons. But for Lilian, marriage is an opportunity to escape her life. An opportunity to outrun herself, as if one could do that. When Warren, her husband, secures a job in Singapore, she grabs this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start afresh.
The past has a way of catching up with you. For Lilian, it returns through Lani, whom she encounters at the school where she teaches English, whose resemblance to her late father unsettles her. That encounter draws her back into a past she has tried to outrun.
Lilian’s inner life shapes the course of her marriage in ways she cannot fully articulate. She is unable to open up to her husband, and what remains unspoken slowly creates distance between them. Warren, for his part, places the strain of their childlessness on her, as their long attempts with IVF fail. But beneath that is a truth Lilian struggles to confront.
“There seemed to be no place for her grief in her new life with Warren, so she’d pushed it down, not realising it was slowly eating away her drive and desire and purpose.”
It is only later, with the help of a therapist that Lilian begins to face this past. She starts to understand herself more clearly and to consider the possibility of moving forward to start afresh. There is something honest in this, the recognition that sometimes we need help, even when asking for it feels difficult. Fadipe handles this with care, though at times the novel takes on more than it can fully carry. I found myself drawn more to Lilian. There is an emotional depth to her story that allows the novel, even briefly, to make the reader reflect.
The beliefs we have about ourselves determine the life we choose to lead. Amaka, a banker, is good at her job, but she struggles with her sense of self, created by a childhood in which she felt rejected by the one person meant to show her love, her father. She questions her worth, and to cope, she gravitates toward chaos and drama. Her choices reflect a pattern of seeking validation that ultimately leaves her more unmoored.
“Her desire to chase after men like Lani - unavailable men like her father who dangled shiny objects while slicing her up into tiny, invisible pieces - did nothing but leave her wanting more.” Realising this becomes her turning point to choose who she wants to be, regardless of her past.
In Such Tremendous Heat brings together three women whose different lives are shaped by a shared desire: the need to cope, control, or escape. Fadipe offers a compelling exploration of ambition, grief, identity, and belonging, particularly amid the pressures of diasporic life and the power of friendship to help one find one's footing.
But at times, the novel feels stretched across too many ideas, moving between themes without always allowing them the depth they require. There were so many additional background characters that, in my opinion, were at the expense of the emotional depth of the main characters, especially Dara. However, it is important to note that the character growth becomes more vivid as the book progresses. It offers a reminder that the work of understanding oneself is not always neat, but necessary.
Jane Shussa is a digital communication specialist with a love for books, coffee, nature, and travel. She can be reached at [email protected].
