Sisters in Solidarity: Review of ‘My Sister, The Serial Killer’
With a title like this, the opening had better not disappoint. And Oyinkan Braithwaite’s ‘My Sister, The Serial Killer’ does better than that. When the book opens, the novel’s troubled narrator Korede is summoned by her younger sister Ayoola with these three words: “I killed him.” Ayoola has just “dispatched” her third boyfriend, and Korede has, once again, been called upon to attend to the crime scene. Which is just as well because Korede is an ace cleaner. She knows that bleach masks the smell of blood, and that the kitchen sink should be “filled with everything required to tackle dirt and grease”. Cleaning helps her think.
Braithwaite’s debut novel is many things — part slasher, part satire, part crime thriller. But at its core, it is a story of two sisters who could not be more unlike; who, like most sisters, share a complicated relationship; who often can’t stand each other but also can’t do without each other. If Ayoola is a serial killer, Korede is the resentful enabler. Ayoola is gorgeous with the “body of a music video vixen”, Korede is angular and efficient. “Ayoola’s skin is a color that sits comfortably between cream and caramel and I am the color of a Brazil nut, before it is peeled; she is made wholly of curves and I am composed only of hard edges,” Korede writes. Korede is introverted, Ayoola dates almost compulsively. Korede is a head nurse, Ayoola a fashion designer. But for all that, the sisters are also allies. The sharp edges of Ayoola’s knife gets her into scrapes she needs rescuing from ever so often. And Korede always feels obliged to cover up her sister’s misdeeds. In drawing out their opposing natures, Braithwaite often plays on the good girl-bad girl tropes. It is the source of much of the novel’s tongue-in-cheek humour, and also a commentary on the stereotypes in which women find themselves boxed in a sexist society.
The relationship is thrown into strain when Ayoola makes a play for the man Korede is secretly in love with. The object of their affection is Dr. Tade Otumu, a man “with a voice like an ocean”, who always has a bowl of candy at his desk and can expertly calm his inconsolable child patients with a lullaby, earning him brownie points from not just the kid but also the mother. Tade shares an easy camaraderie with Korede but is enamoured by Ayoola. Their mutual attraction leaves Korede angry, hurt, and resentful. Yet, she keeps looking after her sister while also living in perpetual fear that Ayoola’s sharp knife won’t spare the man she loves.
In this ‘will she, won’t she’ suspense, the novel has all the makings of a crime thriller. But, under the garb of crime thriller, ‘My Sister, The Serial Killer’, is ultimately a deeply affecting story about the enduring bond between two sisters who alternate between affection, jealousy, and rivalry; share the trauma of childhood abuse, and navigate (in different ways) the sexism of Nigerian society.
As the novel unfolds, we begin to see the legacy of grievous parental violence that is at the heart of Ayoola’s murderous spree. Before his death (which may or may not have been accidental), Ayoola and Korede’s father beats his daughters, tries to pimp them out to business partners, and brings his mistress at home when his wife and daughters are also present. The girls’ mother spends her days under an Ambien-filled haze. With both parents thus occupied, the girls become each other’s primary protectors and caregivers — the origins of their co-dependent relationship.
The book is in equal parts witty, dark, and full of twists. The satirical bent works well to keep the storyline entirely plausible, as it proceeds briskly through chapters named “Bleach”, “Body”, “Scrubs”, “Knife”, “Blood”, and so on. Along the way, there are interesting observations about social media, false beauty standards, men and what they want, and women who see right through them.
The second half of the novel has an unnecessary digression in the parallel story of Muhtar Yautai, a patient in the same hospital where Korede is head nurse, and in whom Korede confides her feelings for Tade and Ayoola’s serial-killing ways. These confessions are made when Muhtar is in a coma. The novel’s crime thriller angle briefly resurfaces when Muhtar wakes up and begins to remember what Korede has told him. But this subplot never really goes anywhere — the only loose end in an otherwise taut narrative.
This uncharacteristic digression aside, Braithwaite’s debut novel is a delightful take on a complex relationship between siblings, told with flair, imagination and plenty of dark humour. At its heart, this is a story of a deep and enduring bond between the two sisters, born out of and fueled by a sense of shared trauma. In the narrative arc of two women teaming up against the powerful, abusive men in their lives, this is a timely book for the present.
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