One of the central themes of the novel is the power that Ayoola’s beauty has to blind people to, or shield them from, the truth. Braithwaite explains, ‘For a while now I’ve been interested in this whole idea that beauty is a virtue. Like when someone dies, and there’s this whole thing of, “and she was so beautiful”, as if that makes it that much more tragic. I’m interested in our obsession with beauty today in the 21st century, on social media, and how we’re constantly trying to change our bodies and attain this level of perfection. I think we’re applying a lot of our energy in the wrong place. I exaggerated it quite a bit in this novel but I do think that when you look at someone beautiful you somehow think that because they’re beautiful they’re better people.’
‘There was that #PrisonBae hashtag that went viral [Jeremy Meeks’ mugshot went viral in 2014]…that was one of the moments where I thought, hang on a minute, there’s something not quite right here. I still don’t know what crime #PrisonBae committed but I know that he’s now got a modelling deal and is dating an heiress or whatever…and it’s because there’s this idea that it’s enough that you’re beautiful.’
Social media permeates the sisters’ lives throughout My Sister, the Serial Killer: missing men trend on Twitter, Ayoola is constantly distracted by her phone, Korede spends time looking up Ayoola’s former victims online, the sisters debate how soon is too soon to post a selfie after your boyfriend has mysteriously disappeared. I ask Braithwaite if she specifically wanted to explore social media as a theme, or if it was something more incidental to the sisters’ modern lives. ‘It was very intentional,’ she tells me. ‘I hadn’t ever infused social media in my work before, but there was a point where I was writing this and I thought to myself, “you say you’re writing a contemporary novel, you’ve got twenty-something year-olds in this book, you’ve not got any social media and it doesn’t make any sense”. I was a little bit hesitant because I was worried that if I did add social media it would make it somehow…a little trite. But once I got into it I was able to explore all the things about social media that irritated and baffled me, and I was really happy that I was able to navigate it.’
‘I’ve been interested in this idea…that when you look at someone beautiful you somehow think that because they’re beautiful they’re better people.’
The novel also explores the legacy of violence. The weapon Ayoola uses is inherited from her father, who had a violent temper of his own. At one point Korede explains that ‘the only retribution she [Ayoola] ever feared was the one that came from her father.’ I ask Braithwaite more about this history of violence in the family. ‘I wanted to know why Korede would go so far. Yes, there’s the idea of protecting your sibling, but she begins to protect Ayoola at a cost to herself. I needed to understand what was going to bind them to that extent. I knew that trauma is one of the things that people go through that can cause them to bind together and have a deeper, sometimes unhealthy, relationship. There’s kind of where the violence came from.’
‘I was playing with the idea of nature versus nurture in the book. I don’t think I ever really answered the questions, but I was asking: who is really to blame here? Where did Ayoola’s violence come from? Did it come from her dad? Where did his violence come from? How much power can an object have? I don’t have any answers, but I was interested in the questions.’
My Sister, the Serial Killer is available now at Readings.
Oyinkan Braithwaite will appear at the Sydney Writers’ Festival from 2–5 May.
