I had been looking forward to this novel since I read the first reviews several months ago and it did not disappoint. What a fantastic debut! The novel opens with Korede getting a phone call from her sister. Her boyfriend is dead, and she needs help cleaning up. And it’s not the first time Korede has gotten this kind of call from her younger sister Ayoola. This novel is fun, dark and a very quick and enjoyable read. It’s the story of an older sister […]
Expectations Mostly Met
Movies and books share many obvious differences but what’s especially difficult for the reader versus the cinephile is there aren’t nearly as many movies as there are books. You’d have to practically live under a rock not to know about films like Aquaman and Vice premiering close to or on Christmas, and even if you want to find info non-blockbuster popular indy types like The Favourite, the internet makes that relatively easy. Whereas with books, there are thousands (millions?) that get released yearly throughout a wide range of genres and if […]
People weren’t sane anymore, which didn’t mean they were wrong. Some sort of cord between action and consequence had been severed.
Crudo – 4/5 Stars This book has a central conceit that I think is less good and less necessary to the novel as a whole than the quality of the writing. This is a novel that unfolds across about two weeks in summer of 2017 as the narrator, who is fashioning herself as the writer Kathy Acker dealing with the lead up to her wedding. So it’s hard to capture the writing of this novel, but it feels a little like auto-writing and spends a […]
Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters
My Sister, the Serial Killer is the debut novel from Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite, and it packs a real punch! In under 300 pages, Braithwaite draws the reader into a fascinating story of Korede, our narrator, who finds herself repeatedly having to clean up her younger sister Ayoola’s messes. And those messes are the murders of her boyfriends, three and counting. The novel is something of a thriller, as we wait to see if Ayoola will kill again and if the sisters will escape the […]