So, a couple of weeks ago we had our Twitter Book Club discussion.
Here's the book we discussed.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
And I tell you what, it was a lot of fun.
Around 30 people got involved in our Twitter chat.
I would very much like to thank Adele Joliffe (@Jolly1975) for writing up the notes to our discussion.
This precis of our discussion is about one million time better than I could have come up with.
Thanks Adele.
So, here's what we thought....
Likes
Structure: how the timeline jumped back and forth and we learned more about the history of their relationship (and perhaps Ayoola's motivations / sensibilities)
It was light and undemanding, easy to read - many liked the bitesize chapter format
The cover (although of course that shouldn't matter!)
Liked the unpacking of the father/daughters dynamic which added credbile context
The strong sense of family (and sisterly) loyalty
It got you to ask yourself the question: would you cover up a murder for a loved one?
Other thoughts / questions
The title and premise perhaps suggested a twist / reveal, but none was forthcoming.
Perhaps not a dislike, more a disservice done to the book, but all the hype set expectations very high and in comparison the book felt like it didn't quite deliver on that promise. Similarly the book's been described as a 'literary sensation' which set up an expectation of more challenging prose.
It’s billed as a comedy book and reviews say it is 'hilarious' but many readers in the group didn't see the comedy (or enough comedy for it to be summarised as 'hilarious’).
A few readers would have liked more of a sense of the city / surroundings / neighbourhood etc. However interestingly, there were some important cultural points here: for those readers feeling they wanted more of a sense of place/surroundings or to have the Nigerian culture more richly present in the book, there is an interesting question: are you just feeling that is lacking because it's 'other' for you? However, for others this was a positive because 'international' books can get too hooked on trying to tell you about the place. This is a human story and we should connect with the people, regardless of where the action is taking place.
Linked to that, there was general interest in a Nigerian cultural POV on the book - was this to some extent struggling to resonate because we're struggling to buy the deep sisterly loyalty that Korede continues to show in the face of ungratefulness and what sometimes seems like pure spite from Ayoola? (The book was featured on R4's Book Club and here (as well as in another interview as quoted in the discussion) the author did say that the family / big sister unconditional loyalty is a strong, recognisable Nigerian cultural characteristic).
The flip side of being bitesize / undemanding is that for some it felt a little one-dimensional: There was a sense that the plot, characters and motivations had the potential to be explored more in a deeper, longer novel.
There was a super-interesting theory that perhaps Korede doesn't have a sister and Ayoola is her alter-ego (because they were such opposites) OR she was the serial killer and projected it all on to Ayoola to deal with it psychologically… but we think probably that’s not the case!
So, we had to give it a score out of 10.
And we did.
And then we added all those scores together and divided it by the number of people who gave a score
And this number is called the average.
And the average is the score we gave the book.
and the score was.
6.5
So, that's it for this month.
Tomorrow, Twitter will be picking next month's book.
Keep your eye's peeled (not literally, obvs), for how you can get involved.
S
