My Sister, the Serial Killer: A Novel

by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Hardcover, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

Bra

Genres

Publication

Doubleday (2018), Edition: 1st Edition, 240 pages

Description

"Satire meets slasher in this short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends. "Femi makes three, you know. Three and they label you a serial killer." Korede is bitter. How could she not be? Her sister, Ayoola, is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body, and she keeps Ayoola from posting pictures of her dinner to Instagram when she should be mourning her "missing" boyfriend. Not that she gets any credit. A kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where Korede works is the bright spot in her life. She dreams of the day when he will realize they're perfect for each other. But one day Ayoola shows up to the hospital uninvited and he takes notice. When he asks Korede for Ayoola's phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and what she will do about it. Sharp as nails and full of deadpan wit, Oyinkan Braithwaite has written a deliciously deadly debut that's as fun as it is frightening"--… (more)

Original publication date

2018-07-17

Media reviews

The Republic

Without aiming for a grand narrative or stuffing the prose with political history as Nigerian novelists are often tempted, Braithwaite entertains. Braithwaite does provide a candid take on under-discussed social issues but in place of grand commentary about the government and public life, she looks

inward and forces a reflection on the problems of the family, and how families can distort people’s lives.

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The Saturday Paper

It’s strikingly original. Braithwaite sets the Offspring-like inner workings of the hospital, and an almost Mills & Boon style – sisters squabbling over the central love interest, the too-good-to-be-true Dr Tade – against a ruthless examination of a culture where Korede’s father beats his

daughters and wife as he tries to sell Ayoola off to a local chief, who points out the 14-year-old girls he wants to marry with his bejewelled cane. At its heart is the idea of beauty and how far it can take you, how quickly it morphs into ugliness.

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The Scotsman

In one respect, it’s classic noir: actions have consequences that are inevitable – but the ending is worlds away from that bleak style, and the pitch-black humour, coupled with the sweltering heat of Lagos, gives a very different feel.

The New York Times Book Review

With a deadly aim, Braithwaite lobs jokes, japes and screwball comedy at the reader. Only after you turn the last page do you realize that, as with many brilliant comic writers before her, laughter for Braithwaite is as good for covering up pain as bleach is for masking the smell of blood.

Financial Times

Braithwaite leaves the reader wondering which of these two sisters is more damaged: the killer, or the killer’s faithful rescuer.

The Guardian Book Blog

By the final chapters, the book has so much going on that it becomes difficult to tell how the various storylines are intertwining. It all adds up to a distinctive but uneasy mix of morbid humour, love story, slashfest, family saga and grave meditation on how abusive behaviour is passed down

through the generations.

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The Irish Times

There is little in the way of psychological depth in My Sister, The Serial Killer, but its deadpan tone and well-paced story make up for the shortcomings.

Los Angeles Review of Books

[Braithwaite] combines the comparatively lighter tropes of Jane Austen with a dark tale of murder, familial complication, and moral compromise, and thereby redefines both tropes for a new generation.

TIME Magazine

Braithwaite has updated these downright Dostoyevskian ideas for the social-media set, and the interrogation of how technology intersects with their lives only adds to the novel’s campy appeal [. . .] But beneath the Weekend at Bernie’s–style morbid hilarity lies a real examination of the

often nettlesome bonds of family, and what we owe to the ones we love.

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The AV Club

With My Sister, The Serial Killer, debut novelist Oyinkan Braithwaite has crafted a refreshingly original story, evocative of the best psychological thrillers.

The Washington Post

The book is indeed about a serial killer and her sibling, but it is not at all the pulpy slasher story you might expect. Instead, it is a playful yet affecting examination of sibling rivalry, the legacy of abuse and the shallow sexism of Nigeria’s patriarchal society.

Black Girl Nerds

Though the book is physically set in Lagos, it’s more accurate location is within the power dynamics of a middle-class West African family. [. . .] These collisions and entanglements of gender, class, and power make My Sister, the Serial Killer a necessary feminist read.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Here is a novel that shrugs off the oft published themes of poverty, political turmoil or civil strife on the African continent. Rather, it concerns itself mainly with the comfy lives of two sisters, Korede and Ayoola, one of whom is undeniably gorgeous and has a pesky habit of killing her

boyfriends.

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Tor.com

My Sister, The Serial Killer is an abrupt punch of a novel that leaves a commensurate confused ache, sweet-sore around the edges, with its refusal to offer ethically pleasant or neat conclusions. No one is without their sympathetic moments; at the same time no one is without cruelties, be they

petty or immense.

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Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The reveal at the end isn’t so much a “gotcha” moment as the dawning of an inevitable, creeping feeling that Braithwaite expertly crafts over the course of the novel. This is both bitingly funny and brilliantly executed, with not a single word out of place.

Kirkus Reviews

Generations of gothic mystery aficionados have attended these uneasy and insidious events before. But besides the setting, what makes Braithwaite’s first novel stand out from others in this genre is the unobtrusively sly approach she takes to the conventions of “black widow” storytelling and

the appealing deadpan voice of the jittery yet world-weary Korede.

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