![]() ![]() This sis a remarkable first novel, one that will stay with me and that I will be rereading before long to savor once more the bold, beautifully-pitched voice of its narrator-and her author. My Sister, the Serial Killer is a bombshell of a booksharp, explosive, hilarious. The writing is sharp and entertaining with interesting characters. The plot however is not ordinary, and delivers everything the title promises (there is a sister and she is a serial killer). Even the largest of surprises the novel contains arrives naturally and believably. My Sister, the Serial Killer is set in present day Lagos, painting a background of an ordinary hardworking woman, living an ordinary middle class life. She pulls no punches, nor does she force her plot in artificial directions. To say too much about the plot and its startling, perfect resolution would be to do a disservice to Braithwaite’s confidence in her readers. The deepest and most moving relationship is Korede’s with the comatose Muhtar Yautai, an elderly man neglected by his family who becomes Korede’s mute, unresponsive confidente. Braithwaite is sharp and perceptive as well on the penetration, as ubiquitous in Lagos as LA, of social media, and the effects of social media on individuals and culture. The hospital where Korede works is fully realized, a true setting not just a backdrop. Korede is an observant narrator: through her vice, Braithwaite brings Lagos alive in sharp scenes of traffic, corrupt police, bridges over rivers with bodies in them. This is a brief novel, but an exceptionally rich one. She makes demands upon herself, desiring, or at least imagining that she desires, She wishes, or thinks she wishes, that she could be more like Ayolla ( sans the murders) but understands that her sister’s carefree, indulgent life is denied her. But Korede’s story is more than the story of her family and the demands it makes upon her. Braithwaite is very good with the details of the cleanups, and with Korede’s anger at Ayoola-an anger rooted as much in Korede’s impatience with Ayoola’s irresponsibility as with Ayoola’s crimes.īeneath the surface, Braithwaite is after something larger than the superb dark comedy thriller her book definitely is.īit by bit-in short c(sometimes less than a page) chapters-the larger story of Korede and Ayoola’s family, and especially their relationship with their hustling, abusive father emerges. Blurb ‘When Korede’s dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what’s expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. That predicament is, on the (bloody) surface her dealings with the corpses her lively ()as it were) younger sister keeps producing. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Korede, a hospital nurse (and eventually head nurse) in Lagos tells her story clearly and crisply, with both a wry sense of perspective and a wistful (to say the least) sense of her predicament. This is the situation that opens Braithwaite’s striking, and often strikingly funny, novel. ![]()
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