A domestic scenario is also at the heart of Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite. The Nigerian-British writer made a big splash with her 2018 debut, My Sister, The Serial Killer, a short and snappy crime novel that won a bunch of prizes and sold loads into the bargain. It’s been a relatively long wait for this second novel, Braithwaite stating that she didn’t want to get pigeonholed as a writer of a particular genre, and Cursed Daughters is indeed very different from her explosive debut.
The story revolves around the affluent Falodun family in Lagos, Nigeria, in particular the generations of women who have apparently all been unlucky in love thanks to a curse laid upon them in the past. Eniiyi is born at the same time as her aunt Monife dies, and apparently bears an uncanny resemblance to her deceased relative.
The story switches between two timelines, one dealing with Eniiyi’s coming of age and her intellectual rejection of the idea of a curse, the other with events around her mother’s and aunt’s generation 20
years previously.
It’s ingeniously pieced together in a simple and effective narrative that is also somehow multi-layered and emotionally resonant. Braithwaite has an understated prose style that keeps things clear and succinct throughout, something that also allows the depths of Eniiyi’s thoughts and feelings to shine through between the lines.
The story builds to a climax that is more concerned with emotional satisfaction and resonance than it is with flashy plot pyrotechnics, but the impact on the reader is all the stronger for that. Confident and compelling writing.
Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite is out on 25 September (Atlantic, £18.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
