レビュー要約

• 短い章と会話の切れ味が、犯罪小説としての推進力と皮肉な笑いを生んでいる。家族を守る義務と倫理の衝突が、軽快さの裏で重く残る点も評価されている。

• 読者の反応は、読みやすさと不穏な設定への好意が目立つ。登場人物の行動に距離を置きつつも、姉妹の関係から目が離せないという感想が多い。

レビュー

• ブッカー賞ロングリスト候補になった風変わりな犯罪小説

  近年、ナイジェリアの女性作家の活躍が目立つのだが、2019年のブッカー賞のロングリストに入ったOyinkan Braithwaiteもそのひとりだ。文芸賞の候補になっただけでなく、アメリカでもベストセラーに入り、商業的成功を収めていいる。 このMy Sister, the Serial Killerは、タイトルから連想できるように、連続殺人を犯す妹について姉が語るスタイルの犯罪小説だ。 病院で優秀な看護師として勤務するKoredeにはAyoolaという妹がいる。家族に心身の暴力を振るう父が亡くなった後は、母と妹の面倒もみている責任感ある家族の大黒柱だ。だが、Koredeを頼りにしている周囲の者は、彼女の外見や単刀直入な態度を批判することしかしない。母は美しいAyoolaが良い結婚をすることを夢見ているのだが、Ayoolaは重大な欠陥を抱えている。それは、恋人をすぐに殺してしまうことだ。そして、殺してから死体の処理に困って姉に助けを求める。 妹はいつも「自己防衛だ」と言い訳するのだが、姉はそれを疑うようになっていた。そして、妹は反省するどころか、Koredeが勤務する病院に美しく着飾って現れ、姉が密かに思いを寄せてきた医師を誘惑する。Koredeは、自分が尊敬してきた医師がいとも簡単に女の外見に騙されることに失望するが、彼が妹に殺されることは防ぎたいと思う……。 My Sister, the Serial Killerは、各章が短く、それぞれの文も短くて、詩のようだ。連続殺人というダークなテーマでありながら奇妙なブラックユーモアもあるし、ナイジェリアの日常生活や常識のようおなものが垣間見えるのも面白い。 しかし、すべての物語に説明が必要だとは言わないが、この小説での妹の言動への説明は少なすぎる。説明がないことが意図的であればかまわないのだが、そうは感じなかった。姉と妹の愛にしても、父と子供たちの関係にしても、女性の表層に騙される男性の浅はかさにしても、深く掘り下げることはない。そこに、非常にもどかしさを感じた。 短くて、読了しやすいので、その点ではお勧めだが、読みのがしても後悔はない小説だと思った

• Summer Reading Choice

  It's an entertaining read. Good for English language learners interested in drama stories. It is not scary, but a story about family and the dynamics in the family.

• 役に立つ教材

  会話が多く、会話体の勉強にはもってこい。

• Finished the book over the weekend. Loved it very much! Very interesting premise, enjoyed the difficult choices our main character is faced with. Love or family? Can she receive the love she is looking for or are all men just the same when confronted with her sister.

• The pretty sister gets away with murdering her boyfriends time and time again. How much longer can this go on?

• Semplicemente fantastico

• This book was fast-paced, at times hilarious, at times, heartbreaking and overall such a joy to read.

• This is a funny novel and a short novel, two things that might make it very appealing to someone looking for a light and quick read. However, it has a darker side, and I’m not talking about the murders of (at least) three men. There are darker things than murders in this novel. In fact, it’s refreshing to have a young, attractive woman murdering men rather than the other way around. Did I say attractive? The narrator Korede (the plain sister) makes it clear that her younger sister Ayoola isn’t just attractive, she is sublimely beautiful and men – and women – are putty in her hands. In Half of a Yellow Sun we had the more beautiful sister as narrator, who cheats with her plainer sister’s man. Here the plainer sister is the narrator, doomed to remain an onlooker to her beautiful sister’s exciting life. Ayoola gets lots of bracelets, rings, flowers and trips to Dubai with adoring men. Korede gets lots of lip from her colleagues at the hospital where she works as a nurse. One disquieting feature of Ayoola’s beauty is her light skin and this is one of the things that makes the novel so disquieting. When it comes to female beauty, light skin is good and dark skin is unforgivably bad. Far more disturbing than murder is the way beauty determines a woman’s life, how she is perceived by others and her sense of self-worth. In this novel, insidiously, women aren’t just judged by men but by women as well. Ayoola has always been the mother’s favourite just because she is beautiful. And because Ayoola is beautiful, men brush past Korede in their haste to gaze on and worship her sister. The mother has given up any hope of Korede finding a husband but she has high hopes that Ayoola will catch a real good ‘un. At one hilarious point she serves a suitor a slice of upside down cake and when he says how delicious it is, she hurriedly points out that Ayoola baked it (great wife material). Meanwhile, Korede tells us that Ayoola couldn’t fry an egg and only ever goes in the kitchen to forage for snacks. Another disturbing feature of the novel is the role of patriarchy in squeezing women into a limited set of life chances and behaviours. Looming over Ayoola’s murders and the relationship between the sisters and their mother is the ghost of their long-dead tyrant of a father. In fact, during the novel, at the insistence of their aunt, the two sisters and their mother put on a tenth anniversary memorial service for the old beast. Then we learn that the aunt was involved in a plot by the father to gift the 14 year old Ayoola to some crusty old tribal chieftain in return for a lucrative business deal. However, we are not asked to believe that some childhood trauma can explain or justify Ayoola’s habit of killing her boyfriends. We are given a rather conventional correlation between beauty and narcissism, but this novel takes it further. Ayoola believes that everything will turn out well for her, no matter what she does. She can shape her own history and destiny. Nothing bad can possibly happen to her. And one reason for her optimism is that she knows that big sister has her back. After she’s done the deed, Korede will turn up with rubber gloves and bleach and clean up the mess. Literally. Some readers might find the ending annoying or frustrating. I found it tremendously satisfying. Suffice to say, sisters stick together. I do have one minor gripe about this book: for some mystifying reason it’s written in American. The author has spent part of her life in the UK, including secondary school and university, and has been back in Nigeria since 2012, so I can’t understand why she used US spelling, grammar and vocabulary. My son-in-law is Nigerian. Several members of my family are married to Nigerians and I have many Nigerian friends and colleagues. None of them speaks American. Half of a Yellow Sun is written in American but I can just about forgive that because Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been living in the US for years, but Oyinkan Braithwaite has no such excuse. I can only surmise that her American editor persuaded her that sales in the US would benefit.

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