Some stories don’t just arrive, they confront. Necessary Fiction didn’t gently ease its way into my life; it cracked something open. The kind of novel that reads like a mirror and a maze all at once. And if I’m honest, I haven’t been the same since I finished it.
When I first received the ARC from Eloghosa Osunde, I didn’t know I was about to be undone in the most necessary way. I still remember the profile I wrote on them a while back, there’s something about Eloghosa that resists being boxed in, whether they’re writing, curating, or storytelling through movement and image. This novel confirms what we already know: they are not just a writer, but a world-builder, an architect of interior lives.
Necessary Fiction is both novel and ritual. A literary séance that calls in the parts of ourselves we’ve buried beneath performance, survival, and the noise of becoming. It reads like a confession and a confrontation. It's spiritual disruption, an emotional reckoning
It’s impossible to pin down in one breath, which is exactly the point. It’s a novel that shape shifts: part love letter, part rage diary, part manifesto. The prose pulses with heat and hunger; the characters feel like they’re sitting right next to you, breathing through the page. There were moments I had to close the book and just… sit. It doesn't just ask to be read, it demands to be felt.
What makes it even more compelling is how multidisciplinary the project is. The thirteen-person-cast audiobook, which Eloghosa personally oversaw adds another layer of texture. It’s not just heard, it’s experienced. That level of creative stewardship is rare. And yet, it feels so natural for someone like Eloghosa, who has shaped worlds through fashion, photography, and film. (If you’ve seen their monologue work with Naomi Campbell for the Victoria’s Secret World Tour '23, you already know the power of their pen.)
What Necessary Fiction offers isn’t just story, it’s truth-telling dressed in fiction’s clothing. It’s a nudge (sometimes a push) toward self-interrogation. It’s about what we choose to hide, what we protect, what we perform, and what we finally dare to say aloud.
If you’ve ever felt unseen, fragmented, or in the process of trying to come back to yourself, this novel will meet you there.
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