I’ve never read a novel told from the perspective of the accomplice before, and it was weirdly compelling. For Korede, that her sister is a serial killer is buried in a complicated mass of other feelings. I can kind of believe it: how can the fact of some recent and anonymous killings compare to the complex mass of sibling rivalries? It’s not even a contest. Thus Korede spends much more time worrying about her how much prettier her sister is than how about much more homicidal she is.
Korede is the older child and the good one. Here’s what’s in her handbag:
One first aid kit, one packet of wipes, one wallet, one tube of hand cream, one lip balm, one phone, one tampon, one rape whistle. Basically, the essentials for every woman.
That’s a high bar: I only own one of these things.
Her younger sister is wild, and pretty, and very dangerous to men. It all gets personal for Korede when the man she has a crush on falls for her sister, putting him in imminent danger.
It’s a fun, twisty killer, and remarkably enough is marketed as such. That it is advertised as a genre novel is I think a testament to its quality. I say this because it is set in contemporary Lagos, so it ran a very serious risk of being consigned to the world literature shelf. This is the death knell. So well done Oyinkan Braithwaite!