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Book Review: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

cover for My Sister, the Serial Killer

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

Doubleday, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0385544238

Available: Hardcover, paperback, audiobook, Kindle edition

 

My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Nigerian author Oyinkan Braithwaite, is set in Lagos, Nigeria. Korede is the dutiful, protective, perfectionist older sister to beautiful, selfish, lazy, and possibly sociopathic Ayoola. Ayoola has “accidentally” stabbed three different boyfriends to death, and each time she has called Korede to help with the cleanup. According to Ayoola, each time has been self-defense, but, Korede wonders, why is she always carrying a sharp knife if it’s accidental? Korede, following through in covering up the murder, reads his blog and sees his social media. He wrote poetry and obviously had friends and family who are worried about his disappearance. He seems like a nice guy, and Korede wonders if Ayoola really had to act in self-defense.

Korede is a nurse who is very good at her job.  She has a long-standing crush on one of the doctors,  who has always been a nice guy, and thinks she is finally getting somewhere with him when Ayoola breezes through the door,  making an unforgettable impression on him.  When Korede expresses her frustration with this, Ayoola tells her there’s no such thing; even so-called “nice guys”  like the doctor are after beauty more than they care about anything else, and she’ll prove it.  Ayoola then proceeds to sweep him away with her beauty, despite her selfishness, cheating on him, and criticism of him.  Korede, worried that he may become Ayoola’s next victim, attempts to warn him and instead of taking her seriously, he accuses her of jealousy, spite, and a lack of sisterly love, confirming Ayoola’s assertion that he isn’t really a “nice guy” after all.

Flashbacks to their childhood and current family relationships reveal that their father was an abusive man who punished Ayoola for being attractive to boys and men, and Korede has been protective of her since then. What’s going on now is clearly tied to the early damage done by the men in their lives. My Sister, the Serial Killer is darkly funny, but it’s also an indictment of the horrors caused by the patriarchy and a solid response to the frequent assertion that “not all men are bad guys”.  The nicest guy in this book is completely blind to the harm he’s doing to both Korede, with his accusations, and Ayoola, with his obsession over her beauty. A compelling, disturbing, perceptive, and satirical book, My Sister, the Serial Killer gets inside your head and stays there. Recommended.

 

Contains: murder, blood, violence, child abuse, implied sexual assault.

Posted on June 25, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: The Place of Broken Things by Linda D. Addison and Alessandro Manzetti

The Place of Broken Things by Linda D. Addison and Alessandro Manzetti

Crystal Lake Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1646338573

Available: Paperback, Kindle

 

Imagine sitting in a poetry gallery appreciating each masterpiece while enveloped in a cloud of perfectly matching music (think Coltrane, Tchaikovsky, Hendrix). In the background, the words of famous poets move you to greater emotion and deeper understanding of each work of art. The Place of Broken Things by Linda D. Addison and Alessandro Manzetti delivers this sensory experience through the poems they have written together.

 

This collection includes poems written by Addison, poems by Manzetti, and poems that are a collaboration. Addison’s poems are spare, clear observations on and assessments of emotions. Her images are dark and sometimes threatening and describe pain and suffering even in the midst of love. In contrast, Manzetti’s poems show a reality that is often unexpectedly beautiful but hints at a hidden or not fully acknowledged darkness. His poems are abstract with colorful, sensual, exotic, and spiritual imagery combined with musical, artistic, and literary allusions. Both poets create poems inspired by the work of other writers such as Neruda, Wheatley, and Ginsberg.

 

The collaboration poems are the most evocative because they take the individual artists’ styles and images to the next level. “The Dead Dancer,” for example, focuses on the music that accompanies this “dance” (“horns mourning,” “can loneliness have a soundtrack?” “dreams become strings played by Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique”), and “Like Japanese Silk” features a church with a bronze cross “which looks like God’s antenna” and a “back” that “looks like Japanese silk.” In “A Clockwork Lemon Resucked,” a poet with “a cure for sorrow” and a knowledge of “the secrets of Mozart and Stevie Wonder” is now suffering “reeducation” in a cell “overlooking a dump and two lemon trees.” “The Yellow House” is a magnificent poem that captures the beautiful rawness and disturbing need that must have been a part of Van Gogh’s artistic desires (“I will give you color – / I will give you stars and revelations”).

 

Addison and Manzetti have collected “broken things” and found a painfully exquisite emotional beauty in them. Highly Recommended

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note: The Place of Broken Things was a nominee on the final ballot and lthe winning title for the category of Superior Achievement in Poetry for the 2019 Bram Stoker Awards.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on April 28, 2020 by , 2 comments

Book Review: Invisible Chains by Michelle Renee Lane

Invisible Chains by Michelle Renee Lane

Haverhill House Publishing, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-949140-03-3

Available: Hardcover, paperback

 

Jacqueline, an enslaved Creole growing up on a Louisiana plantation in Michelle Renee Lane’s Invisible Chains, learns all too soon what it means to be black and female. She is beaten, raped, and terrorized but manages to survive by using the secrets of Vodun her mother taught her and by tapping the powers of the vampire and werewolf who assist her on the flight toward what she hopes will be a rescue.

Even though monsters help Jacqueline, she is still threatened by them and in constant danger, even from love. Lane uses these relationships, including a flirtation with the vampire, to highlight the suffering, marginalized groups depicted in this novel. This includes enslaved people and monsters but also mixed race people, Spanish Jews, Irish immigrants, circus performers, Gypsies, seers and couples in interracial relationships. People who are considered different by the larger white society are powerless and can survive only by appeasing and imitating their oppressors or using magical or supernatural powers against them.

Although the book often moves quickly from one terrifying event to the next, Lane effectively traces Jacqueline’s growing sense of her own talents and strengths. Jacqueline learns that each horrific experience enhances her abilities as a conjurer and intensifies her understanding of herself, thus making it possible for her to voice her demands and choose what she needs to live. She also learns that she must protect her mind and soul most of all and that she has a certain power in knowing the future in which her true freedom will never be a reality. However, she continues to be brave, heroic, and unstoppable. Recommended.

Contains: Graphic violence including rape and torture; sexual situations

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

Editor’s note: Invisible Chains was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Novel.

Posted on April 12, 2020 by , Reply
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