British Natasha and The Ashewo Doctor (Book Review)

The danger of a single story is that it forces out other possibilities and limits the views of anyone looking from outside. If you, for instance, persistently say Nigerian men are toxic, it automatically excludes all the Nigerian men who aren't toxic and may in fact be more than toxic Nigerian men. The job of fiction isn't to reject stereotypes but to turn them into art forms that makes you at least ponder if it cannot make you wonder.

James Edeoghon's debut, British Natasha and The Ashewo Doctor out in August 2025 seems to be able to make readers ponder and wonder.

This novel, which relies heavily on time stamped messages between former lovers plays with plot like a pilot might play on a plane on autopilot, it provides dialogue that seem to be happening right in front of you, and leaves the readers to bequeath on the characters their own interior monologue.

Unlike many romance novels, British Natasha and the Ashewo Doctor is narrated in first person by a Nigerian character, Leonard, a doctor in a residency programme in the UK. He meets Natasha, a nurse assistant and single mum of one and they start a riotously sexual affair which morphs into the semblance of a relationship as Natasha gets in deeper while Leonard, sometimes coolly, sometimes chaotically remains on the surface.

Leonard's narration of his relationship with Natasha is one that sits right on the fence between memory and imagination. He writes with certainty, leaving nothing to speculation as though his time stamped messages are enough for us to think he's not mixed his fact with conjecture.

The book is set in Reading with a brief stint in Lagos. It documents the British pastoral as much as it divulges the perils of Lagos living.

At the end of the first part of this four part, 235 page novel, we see how Leonard's sexual appetite is tactically satisfied by Natasha's own enduring sexiness. We see how pregnancy can change the dynamic of a relationship. We see what is left of our humanity when we're confronted with difficult choices.

British Natasha is a straightforward easy read that runs linearly. It has two major characters who carry the story on. We don't get throw backs, flashbacks or multiple time frames or timelines that make readers dizzy. Instead, the story is one continuous forward moving machine with an ending waiting in disguise and completely different from all the sex that one enjoys reading in the first three parts of the book.

James Edeoghon is a smart writer. Being inside his prose is like being in a medical textbook, a hospital cafeteria, an exam hall. He provides us with inside information on the journey to UK consultancy as well as he details the dark side of enslavement to the flesh.

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