Book Review - Cursed Daughters
Nigerian-British author Oyinkan Braithwaite’s mordant first novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer (2018), achieved that rare balance of commercial and critical acclaim. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and won the 2020 Crime and Thriller Book of the Year at the British Book Awards.
Like her debut, Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters is strong on female kinship and intergenerational trauma. The Falodun family have been cursed for generations, ever since an ancestor’s affair with a married man provoked the vengeful wife to declare that the woman and her female descendants would never prosper in love: “men will be like water in their palms.” Setting her story between 1994 and the present day, Braithwaite braids together the fates of three women bound by the curse.
The novel opens with Monife’s suicide by drowning, and reconstructs what led to her death, and how her younger cousin Ebun was implicated in her decision. After Monife’s funeral, Ebun gives birth to Eniiyi, who bears a startling resemblance to the deceased, prompting several family members to believe she is her reincarnation. The story unfolds from their three perspectives.
The Falodun women may rule the roost at home, but they must navigate a patriarchal society. Abandoned by fathers, betrayed by lovers, they repeat the same mistakes. After Bunmi, Monife’s mother, is left by her husband, she returns to Nigeria with her two children and seeks out the dubious skills of spiritual healer and herbalist Mama G to “clear his eye” and win him back, “despite the fact that he had a new wife and two children under five, shacked up in what used to be their London home”.
Monife is convinced things will be different with her choice of man, Kalu; so perfect she calls him Golden Boy. She’s an avid reader of Mills & Boon, and there’s a touch of the genre’s melodrama in their romantic assignations. Yet she is thwarted by Kalu’s mother, who believes her son can do better. Desperate and convinced she is losing him, Monife turns to Mama G’s sorcery. Ebun, by contrast, avoids romantic entanglements, focused on work and her daughter, fiercely guarding Eniiyi’s paternity until the novel’s end. Eniiyi herself falls for the man she rescues from drowning — a symbolic echo of Monife’s fate.
Braithwaite writes in plain, accessible prose and Lagos is affectionately portrayed — there’s no hint of Nigeria’s political tumult. Her strength lies in vivid characterisation: the women are headstrong, flawed and compelling, even if their trajectory is occasionally predictable.
Elements of magical realism are skilfully woven into the narrative, and her trademark dark humour is evident, particularly in the tensions between tradition and superstition. She invites readers to laugh at rituals her characters take seriously. Observing her mother, Monife muses: “She looked every bit the schoolteacher; you could almost forget she was fond of chanting to Yoruba spirits in the nude.”
Braithwaite’s second novel is almost twice the length of her first, more diffuse and delivers less of a sucker punch. But here again is her lightness of touch and her distinctive interpretation of female agency and its absence. Cursed Daughters is compulsive reading.
Originally published by the Financial Times