Maureen Corrigan

In Beloved, Toni Morrison writes of a kind of loneliness that is wrapped tight like skin.

I don't think Morrison's taught simile has been topped, but two new novels attest to the inexhaustibility of language to describe a state we all unwillingly experience.

peek at the multiple categories that Peme Aguda's debut novel, One Leg on Earth, is shelved under, and you'll start to understand how distinctive her writing is.

Amazon, for instance, sells the book under horror, occult and supernatural, city life, and literary fiction.

It's all those and more.

Agudas Shai's main character is a 23-year-old Nigerian college graduate named Yosoye.

A communications major, she feels lucky to have been assigned to an architectural firm in Lagos for her year of national service.

Determined to shuck off what she thinks of as her inward tilt, Yosoye walks into a local joint shortly after moving into her one-room apartment.

She convinces herself to sit down and order a beer, and when a man approaches, she goes off to a cheap motel with him and has sex.

Then she discovers she's pregnant.

In addition to all the mundane reasons why this pregnancy comes at a less than ideal time for Yesoye, there's also something weird happening in Lagos.

Pregnant women have been walking into the ocean, jumping into lagoons, and drowning themselves.

Some force compels them to be one with water.

Aguda has linked motherhood and the supernatural before in her 2024 short story collection, Ghost Roots, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Here, it's not only the mass suicides that render Yosoye's Lego sinister.

It's also the locale of the building project where she works, churning out promotional materials.

Omi City will be a preserve of the wealthy, built on a peninsula reclaimed from the ocean.

Right now, though, it's just miles of empty sand, occupied only by the architectural firm's rough headquarters.

The self-important employees there barely acknowledge Yosoye's existence.

Her lifelong loneliness motivates Yosoye to keep the pregnancy.