A Review of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s “My Sister the
Serial Killer”
By
Ursula Edmands
Thursday, June 4, 2020.
A thriller with a difference- this entertaining novel from Nigerian
author, Oyinkan Braithwaite, hooked me from its very first sentence, “I bet you
didn’t know that bleach masks the smell of blood”, and kept me guessing almost
to the end, 266 pages later.
Ms Braithwaite, who says she is not interested in writing about the
political or economic situation in her country, nevertheless paints a
convincing picture of middle-class Nigerian life today. The background to the
main story shows a society where it is perfectly normal to have servants to
pick up the mess, and generally run the household, helping with elaborate tea
parties and dinners, and equally possible, we are asked to believe, to dispose
of embarrassing corpses in under the bridge over a lagoon in which the victims
of a horrific traffic accident are decaying. At least, muses the narrator,
“Femi (the latest corpse) will have company.”
The narrator is Korede, the elder of two sisters, whose father died in
mysterious circumstances not to be discussed publicly although there are clear
hints of domestic abuse. She works as a nurse in a large hospital where she
efficiently manages the staff and harbours an unrequited love for one of the
surgeons. Her sister, Ayoola, the serial killer of the title, is a glamorous
fashion designer, whose looks mean that men everywhere fall in love with and
desire her as soon as they meet her. She, however, is prompted to kill them as
soon as they get too close, and then has to ask Korede for help to “clean up”
the mess - hence the reference to bleach with which the novel begins.
Quite why Ayoola is driven to kill so many men without, it seems a qualm
or expression of remorse, is never made entirely clear, although her secret is
linked to the way in which her father died, and why he too, had to be
killed.
Well written, witty, and full of laugh aloud moments, interspersed with
descriptions of daily life which invoke either horrified amazement (at police
behaviour, traffic management, for example) depict intimate glimpses of
normality in the sisters’ comfortable home, the pace never slows. The reader is
kept in suspense to the end of this truly original tale of two sisters bound to
each other by their mother’s dictum, uttered when Ayoola was born, “You’re the
big sister now, Korede. And big sisters look after little sisters.”
“My Sister the Serial Killer” is available on Amazon.