Booksology A forgivable sophomore slump
When I found Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut, My Sister, The Serial Killer, on my father-in-law’s shelf, I knew a couple of pages in that I was reading something special, and the book was finished in a single sitting. Seven years have passed, so you can imagine my excitement at learning that Braithwaite’s sophomore novel, Cursed Daughters, was finally here. Now, it’s not an easy thing to follow up a book that not only sold well but was also on the Booker longlist and lauded by critics and casual readers alike as the opening of a potentially momentous literary career. So it’s also no shame that Cursed Daughters doesn’t manage to live up to the fanfare.
The Falodun household in Lagos has six bedrooms, one for each of Kunle’s daughters, who built the house having already witnessed three generations of his foremothers suffering from the curse laid upon the family’s matriarch, Feranmi, by the furious wife of the man Feranmi seduced. Feranmi was told that every woman who followed her line would suffer for and in their relations with men, and sure enough the Falodun family tree becomes a succession of single mothers, abandoned by the men they loved, almost always with a female child to continue the curse’s stranglehold.
The current iteration of the hexed home finds sisters Bunmi and Kemi raising their daughters Monife and Ebun, and it is the two cousins that form the crux of the novel, with Monife’s suicide beginning the book, and each subsequent, time-hopping chapter leading to the ultimate revelation of the inter-generational and present-day events that led up to the tragic death. This story runs alongside that of Ebun’s daughter, Eniiyi, who is born on the day that Monife dies and thanks to an uncanny physical resemblance to her dead relative, is haunted by the notion that she is a reincarnation.
The premise is strong, the central characters vividly drawn, and the writing largely crisp. But, and perhaps this is unavoidable in a novel about history repeating itself, where Braithwaite’s debut flew off the page and pushed its reader along in eager anticipation, Cursed Daughters becomes predictable in places, labours the parallels between Eniiyi and Monife to a point that ceases to be compelling, and makes the relationship breakdowns too superficial in comparison to the sharp and resonant depiction of the Falodun family.
If this were her first novel, I would be talking up the writer’s promise and looking forward to her next book. And I will unquestionably read whatever Braithwaite does next. The best advice I can give to anyone who hasn’t read either of her novels is simply to start with Cursed Daughters. You’ll have a better time that way.
