The List

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For all her wariness around her public image, things are going extraordinarily well for Adegoke. A year before she had finished writing her book, the TV rights were bought by the powerhouse combination of HBO Max, BBC and A24. You couldn’t dream up a more prestigious production force. The making of the show is now under way with Adegoke on board as creator and executive producer. Social media is like putting your hand in a fire. You learn from it. I’ve healed. Why couldn't he have just been the love-to-hate-him book villain that his personality clearly wanted him to be??? why do we end on good terms?? second, I don't think we need a book about men being falsely accused of things and throwing themselves into traffic as a result. does it happen? sure, sometimes. rarely. BUT WE KNOW THAT ANYWAY. there is no shortage of people running to tell you about false accusations any time something happens. we don't need another book about it. It's a very readable and engaging book. Also I love that novels are exploring our digital lives and how the internet is intertwined in our relationships and bias because of what we consume.

I have a friend and we both used to say that our biggest fear was being turned into memes, but now, it’s being cancelled. I thought, I’m afraid of this because I’m a public-facing writer, but now we’re all public-facing figures in a way. And in trying to be consistent, I’m quite unlike Ola—I’m unapologetically an inconsistent person. For example, I’m Nigerian and from the Yoruba tribe, and culturally, men in the Yoruba community tend to pay for things instead of women. I love that [ laughs]. I’ve never tried to frame it as a feminist practice, because it’s not. It’s like trying to put a feminist slant on misogynistic elements of hip-hop. I’m like, it is just misogynistic, but it’s okay that you still like it. That’s not to say we should embrace hypocrisy, but we should embrace being flawed people. At the moment, I feel like we’re sleepwalking into this incredibly severe mental health crisis. From ambiguous faux pas to unequivocally abysmal transgressions, we’ve all sat in the peanut gallery, casting aspersions on those who have let us and others down, or callously abused their power, or in some cases, those we couldn’t wait to see take a fall. You can also use the external lift near the Artists' Entrance on Southbank Centre Square to reach Mandela Walk, Level 2.Mowbray, Nicole (11 July 2018). "The women with Slaying power: Publishing sensations Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke". Metro Newspaper UK . Retrieved 10 November 2018.

That was interesting for me to explore because I grew up with sisters and have an almost entirely female friendship group, so my understanding of him was built through conversations with the very few male friends I do have. Not to generalise, but I think many men don’t feel like they can be as emotional as they’d like to be with their male friends, so when you’re a guy’s only female friend, you see a totally different side to them. I’m desperate to hear from more men who’ve read the book because I’m so interested in their perspective. So, once you’d finished the book, what was it like to see it become the subject of this intense bidding war? Compulsively written, Yomi Adegoke’s debut has all the tension and build of a thriller, but swaps its typical tropes and themes and instead delves into the depths of race, infidelity, cancel culture in the wake of the Me Too movement, and virtue signalling. It began as a list of anonymous allegations about abusive men. Now it has been published online. Ola made her name breaking exactly this type of story. She would usually be the first to cover it, calling for the men to be fired. Except today, Michael’s name is on there. I was doing the most navel-gazing – I was on my Van Gogh shit. I painted so many self-portraits, because all I could really see was me?” I laugh, but she means it. Her paintings, she says, reveal her most natural talent. The List is already being adapted for TV with Adegoke as executive producer. The various cliffhangers and twists suggest it was written with this in mind. It occasionally feels as though she is trying to shoehorn too many characters and subplots into one tale, but we remain invested in her main protagonists’ journey. This nuanced exploration of celebrity culture and online toxicity should win Adegoke new fans.Bizarre [ laughs]. I literally never wanted to do TV again—I had a really difficult experience a couple of years ago with TV, but A24 were so encouraging and supportive and wanted me to be involved. It’s really early days now, but it’s been so exciting discussing it and making a start.

Yomi Adegoke". The Independent. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022 . Retrieved 10 November 2018.

He couldn't remember a time they'd been happier. He never would. He would revisit this evening in the weeks after it happened, and think about all the things he would have said and done differently. That if he had known what the next day held, he wouldn't have dared to risk joking about their future together. He would have told her that he struggled to pinpoint the happiest day of his life because he couldn't decide between the day she agreed to marry him or the day she told him she loved him too. That he knew it would next be their wedding day, but one day that too would be overtaken by them having their first child. Bizarre [laughs]. I literally never wanted to do TV again – I had a really difficult experience a couple of years ago with TV, but A24 were so encouraging and supportive and wanted me to be involved. It’s really early days now, but it’s been so exciting discussing it and making a start. I’m sure those leading roles will be really sought after. I saw that Sheila Atim and Arinzé Kene are narrating the audio book?

One morning, with weeks to go before their wedding, the couple wake up to texts and tweets about a list detailing allegation after allegation against prominent men – including Michael. For well-known feminist writer Ola, known for breaking stories about similar abuses of power, the tug between holding on to her moral compass and trusting her partner becomes all-consuming. I loved the premise for this but was a bit nervous about its execution. It's a compulsive read, first and foremost, and makes many very valid points about social media. Rather than lazily lulling readers into an “It’s cancel culture gone mad” trap, The List holds up a mirror to our internal biases and deeply held beliefs around a number of prejudices, forcing us to ask ourselves: if someone close to you – say, your fiancé – was accused of an act that shattered your entire sense of morality in a public forum, how far would you go to defend them? Should you, at all?I'd describe this as a finger-on-the-pulse hot and buzzy book but also as one that could have been more polished as a fictional vehicle to carry the important social commentary and debate. Halfway through the book I felt it should be rounded up and got bored. I had to force myself through a lot of things I thought were unnecessary. For access to the Queen Elizabeth Hall auditorium seating rows A to C and wheelchair spaces in the Front Stalls, please enter via the Artists' Entrance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road (Level 1). He let a smirk slip, before kissing her forehead tenderly once more. "When did we first smash again?" he asked, flinching as her fist missed his arm and landed on the seat cushion with a thud.