Cursed Daughters
A Novel
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK • A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer (“A bombshell of a book . . . Sharp, explosive, hilarious.” —The New York Times)
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, INDIGO, USA TODAY
When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps.
There is also the matter of the family curse: "No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace"—which has broken numerous hearts and caused three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof.
When Eniiyi falls in love she can no longer run from her family’s history. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?
Cursed Daughters is a brilliant cocktail of vibrant humor and hard-won wisdom, romantic love and familial obligation. It asks us what it means to be given a second chance and how to live both wisely and well with what we’ve been given.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this scintillating saga from Braithwaite (My Sister, the Serial Killer), generations of women in a Lagos family contend with a curse that prevents them from securing husbands. The nonlinear narrative begins in 2000 when 25-year-old Monife Falodun drowns herself after losing the love of her life, Kalu. Braithwaite then rewinds to unspool Monife and Kalu's passionate and ill-fated love story, eventually revealing how they were separated. Along the way, she interweaves Monife's story with that of Monife's niece Eniiyi, born on the day of Monife's funeral. Eniiyi looks so much like Monife that their family believes Eniiyi is Monife reincarnated. Indeed, the girl shares certain characteristics with her aunt, such as a desire for love and the hope to break their family's curse, which was placed on their ancestor Feranmi by the first wife of Feranmi's husband, who said, "No man will call your house, home." Eniiyi has recurring dreams of Monife by the sea where she drowned, but Monife never speaks in the dreams until after Eniiyi, now a recent college graduate, rescues a handsome boy named Zubby from drowning. Afterward, Monife turns to Eniiyi in a dream and mysteriously says, "Not again." As Eniiyi falls for Zubby, she discovers a connection between him and Monife's past. Braithwaite's use of magical realism is effortless and vivid, as when the dream version of Monife speaks to Eniiyi in Eniiyi's own voice. She also sustains the strange mystery of whether Eniiyi is in fact Monife, all while exploring the family's painful cycle of abandonment. This is riveting.
