His shrewish wife is less than happy at this turn of events, and the picture the author sketches of his family life adds complexity to the central account of the sisters and the household where they live with their mother. The only other person who is on Korede’s side is Muhtar, who eventually emerges from his coma. Often it reveals little except Ayoola scrolling around on her smartphone or ditzing about in ways that amuse her and us but infuriate Korede.īut gradually seemingly minor events turn out to be important, either revealing something of the sisters’ childhoods, or showing that while Korede has a doggy devotion to Ayoola, the younger Ayoola has the cat’s ability to show up seemingly out of nowhere, just when good-girl bossy sister Korede needs her. Each short chapter tempts the reader on to the next. But her narrative pacing is that of a novelist of promise. Here the brief chapters and the intense focus on a small group of characters reflect that experience as a writer of short fiction. This is Oyinkan Braithwaite’s first novel, though she has published numerous short stories, mostly in her native Nigeria. Then why is she killing boyfriends? And why is Korede enabling her by cleaning up the mess, and disposing of bodies in the lagoon? Light eventually shines on this mystery, and it also illumines the relationship between the sisters, and why they are the way they are. It is a mystery how much feeling Ayoola is even capable of.” “Perhaps if it were someone else at the receiving end of this show of sentimentality, her words would hold some weight,” reflects Korede. She asks for Ayoola’s knife so she can throw it in the lagoon after Femi, but Ayoola claims she must keep it because it is all she has left of their dead father.

Of course, Korede, the responsible sister remonstrates with naughty Ayoola. She’s the one who came up with the plan to dump him in the lagoon.īut Femi - the victim - was Ayoola’s third, and as Korede tells Muhtar, a patient in a prolonged coma and therefore presumably not able to hear her, “Three and they label you a serial killer.” She looked it up on Google, so she knows. She’s the one who cleaned up the blood after Ayoola stabbed him. She didn’t mean to, of course.” Korede reflects. “On their one-month anniversary, she stabbed him in the bathroom of his apartment. But just as this chapter impels the reader forward, so does each of the others, and so does Korede.

I had hoped to hear those words never again.” That’s the whole first chapter, and in a novel of short chapters it’s the shortest. “Ayoola summons me with these words - Korede, I killed him.

My sister the serial killer