Jeff Iwu is a playwright and poet, and Cold Things is his debut novel, a work that boldly traverses the painful terrain of domestic violence and sexual abuse. From its opening pages, the story feels unsettling, drawing readers into a world where grief and violence quietly shape the lives of its characters.
Iwu doesn’t sensationalise these themes; instead, he presents them with restraint, allowing the weight of each moment to build gradually. His language is simple yet evocative, giving familiar settings such as a home, a city, a village, a prison, which are subtle tensions that keep the reader alert. Each line in the story is carefully shaped so that the ‘cold things’, the deaths and betrayals at the heart of the novel leave a lasting impression. The result is a narrative whose darkness feels lived-in rather than exaggerated, making its emotional impact powerful.
What is striking in the novel is the use of the name/word ‘Ijeoma’—farewell—by the author, which literally follows every murder, sinister secret, and sentence to life imprisonment. As a result, the shudders of death and grief send a cold sensation which ends with Ijeoma—farewell—subtly closing a murder but at the same time opening another trajectory of murder. The author makes the name Ijeoma become a terror in silence, a loud thudding object in an ominous and calm atmosphere.
Moreover, with powerful imagery and emotions, the author depicts domestic violence experienced by Ijeoma, whom we could say her name brought about the trajectories and incidents of deaths that run throughout the novel. Ijeoma, who has been physically assaulted by her husband, thought of ways to end her pain but ends up staying in the marriage and killing her husband. In Freud’s psychoanalytic terms, her repressed rage and emotional trauma may represent the return of the repressed, the unconscious drive for liberation surfacing violently after years of suppression.
Significantly, Ijeoma explains that she had been putting poison gradually in her husband’s food to make him weak for a physical confrontation, till she murders him that week after her husband returns from the village. She murders him with a pillow that night, the very pillow she soaked her tears with every night.
At the epilogue she says, ‘I held the pillow in my hands. Not just any pillow, the one I had cried into too many nights, the one that knew the shape of my silence. I pressed it down. Gently at first. Then firmly. Then with everything I had carried for years’ (210).
This is comparable to the manner Mama Beatrice took her husband’s life in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, except for the fact that the poison did what it was sent to do without Mama Beatrice using a pillow.
An interesting misdemeanour of what I would call ‘the village people syndrome’ happens in Iwu’s Cold Things. The myth of the village people is equated to being the architects of one’s destruction, capable of murdering anyone deemed successful. This plays out in the novel as Ijeoma quickly ropes the death of her husband on her in-laws, claiming they want to take over her husband’s properties, which makes them kill him through their charms. She says to Lambert, her brother-n-law, ‘We all know he was poisoned by you, village people. Didn’t he die on the night he returned from the village?’ (36). Here, the village people syndrome perfectly covers Ijeoma’s crime.
What is similar in Iwu’s and Adichie’s novels is the refusal of the women to leave their marriages despite the abuse they suffer; instead, they resort to killing their husbands as a way to free themselves and their children from violence. This act of violence, however, does not resolve their struggles but deepens the novel’s tragic undercurrent.
Cold Things is a tragic novel, with Ijeoma haunted by the very thing she tried to escape. Her name becomes a thread linking other chilling deaths in the story, ensnaring her and other characters in the web of destruction she spun. Her flight from Manjo City does not end the tentacles of death or stop the spider from weaving more webs, bringing further doom to anyone caught in it.
One might imagine that killing the spider that falls on Obioma during his visit to Uncle Lambert at Manjo City puts an end to its weaving of deadly webs. Instead, the act pulls him deeper into a chain of events, binding him to the very violence he hopes to escape. The spider’s death does not stop the cycle; it entangles Obioma, making him one of those who touch the cold things, cold deaths, when he murders Uncle Lambert, the uncle who sexually abuses him on the night of his arrival in Manjo City. This reveals how violence in the novel spreads like a web, drawing even the unwilling into its threads.
Also, the interactions among the prisoners at the Manjo City Prison reflect the worrisome and poor living conditions the prisoners are subjected to. Jazy, a seasoned international inmate who has been incarcerated in different prisons across the world, compares the Manjo Prison to those in the West. He talks about the prisons in the West creating a good and safe environment for their inmates, unlike Manjo City where they are treated with injustice and exposed to conditions that facilitate murder. Murders, injustices, deaths, drugs, and homosexuality pervade the prison.
Furthermore, Iwu introduces us to a pastor who visits the prison and gives the prisoners messages of hope, but there is no presence of medical facilities, therapy, or rehabilitation for the inmates. This exposes the decadence of the Manjo government, who cares little for its citizens, let alone those in prison.
When Ekene and Gimba experience psychotic issues, they are separated from others and confined to a single cell by Mr Oshikim, the Prison Warden. Mr Oshikim claims the prison is no psychiatric home and will deal harshly with any inmate who raves mad. Mr Haruna confronts him and he says, ‘Sir, you mean I should take care of this boy? Who has the time to take care of a madman…This is a prison and not a psychiatric hospital’ (159)
In fact, Iwu opens our eyes to what happens in the single cell, which happens to be a room of cold things (death), where someone kills any inmates who have lost their minds. The culprit might be Mr Oshikim, but we never know because Jazy ends him that night before dawn, and Ekene shouts through the night as he escapes from someone’s groping hands in the dark. At dawn, Mr Oshikim is found between the two gates that lead to the cells, with only the first gate locked. The sight unsettles everyone, and quiet fear settles over the prison. The men whisper among themselves, realising that survival in Manjo Prison depends on more than just staying behind bars; it depends on outlasting the darkness that moves within them.
The escape from the prison shows the corruption of Manjo City Prison and Manjo government, who care less about her people. The escape from the prison was not by the government but by armed terrorists who broke the prison walls and let out the inmates. Ekene and Obioma escaped from the prison; this may sound hopeful but is destructive, as there were no forms of rehabilitation for inmates. Ekene could possibly still be a paedophile, despite the number of years he had spent in prison, and Obioma, without good therapy, may still resort to homosexuality.
Obioma, when he first saw Ekene at the prison, thought it was Uncle Lambert at first due to the striking resemblance between Ekene and Uncle Lambert. Their reunion is not something to be happy with but may open other strings to cold things. Thus, Obioma’s parents would be heartbroken to discover the prison is broken, with figures showing the numbers that fled and died.
Ijeoma, whom the writer brought back in the epilogue, has changed her name to Mama Onyema, No one knows tomorrow. Nevertheless, her change of name does not stop the murder she started weaving in the web. Is Madam Dollars the architect of destruction that befell Ijeoma’s family? Is it Madam Dollars’s idea for Ijeoma to kill her husband, given that Madam Dollars is a widow herself and inherited her husband’s wealth after his death?
Thus, the cold things did not become warm as Ijeoma suggests at the end of the novel. The change of her name can avoid her being traced by people, but in her dreams, she is still haunted by ghosts of those caught in the web she started spinning, haunted by the very things she fled from. So, with Ekene and Obioma out of prison, Obioma’s parents in the cold with no idea if their child is alive, the cold things continue.
In conclusion, Iwu makes the reader experience a purgation of emotion at the end of the novel, but this purgation does not make things warm. Rather, it makes the readers imagine many cold things to come.
Iwu makes the reader experience a purgation of emotion at the end of the novel, but this purgation does not make things warm. Rather, it makes the readers imagine many cold things to come.
Cold Things is a good read. Therefore, I would recommend Cold Things to lovers of literature and literary students. The language is direct and simple. The plot is episodic but would capture your interest. To enjoy Cold Things, read in a very quiet place—if possible, a dark room—to enjoy the beauty in the carefully crafted writing of the author.
* Mary Onyinyechukwu Benedict holds a Master’s degree in English and Literary Studies from University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Her research interests include Border Poetics, Feminism, and Postcolonialism. She won the ANA Poem of the Week Award 2024 and contributes to African literature through research and creative writing.
