My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite: A review

I found myself grinning and sometimes chuckling my way through this tale of a serial killer in Lagos. Does that make me a bad person?

The description of the book on Goodreads is: "Satire meets slasher in this short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel about a Nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends." That pretty succinctly sums it up. But it is actually much more than that.

It is, at its heart, a story about family dynamics and loyalty. It is a cleverly written satire, full of dark humor and social commentary that is elegantly disguised. But, basically, it is the story of the love and devotion of two sisters.

We see things from the point of view of Korede. She is a nurse and a neat freak and she seems to lead a fairly normal life. She is well thought of on her job at the hospital in Lagos and is in line to be named head nurse. She has a crush on a young doctor called Tade and she hopes that he will notice her and realize they are soul mates. She is the older sister and the plain one in the family.

Ayoola is the younger sister and she is flirty, charming, and gorgeous. She is noticed wherever she goes and men fall all over themselves trying to get her attention. Unlike Korede, she has no shortage of boyfriends, but when she tires of a beau, instead of breaking up with him, she kills him. Then she calls on Korede to help her dispose of the body. So far, this has happened three times and Korede has learned via the internet that with the third murder, one is considered to be a serial killer. 

But what led the two sisters to this point? We learn that they grew up with an autocratic and abusive father who regularly beat them with a cane. Their mother had retreated into an Ambien-induced fugue and was unable to protect them. Finally, when the girls were teenagers, the father was preparing to beat them one day and reached for his cane and he fell and hit his head on a glass coffee table. The girls watched as his life drained away, then they woke their mother and told her. It isn't entirely clear whether the man slipped or was pushed but I have my suspicions.

At any rate, Korede managed to deal with the tragedy and at least feign normality. Ayoola, too, successfully feigns normality; no one ever looks beyond her beautiful face and body. But, in fact, she is a sociopath. 

The two sisters continue to live with their mother and lead their separate lives but then one day, Ayoola turns up at the hospital to visit her sister and Tade sees her and immediately falls under her spell. Korede's worst fear is realized when they start a relationship. Will this one end like the others? Korede must find some way to prevent it.

This was just great fun to read from beginning to end. It was well-written and the quirky characters were fully developed by the author. It certainly has a unique premise and I found the plot thoroughly addictive. I was sorry to see it end.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars   

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - January 2019

Welcome to Bloom Day in my zone 9a garden near Houston, Texas. If you visited here on December Bloom Day, you'll find that most of what I have to show you today are the same plants that were in bloom then. We haven't had any below freezing temperatures since then, so the garden is much the same.

In fact, we haven't had any below freezing temperatures since early November, just before that month's Bloom Day. Our winter so far has been quite mild with our nighttime low temperatures usually in the 40s F, occasionally falling into the high 30s. What we have had is rain and plenty of it. Heavy rainfalls of two to four inches have been fairly common, leaving my yard in a bit of a soggy mess and giving me a good excuse to stay inside and read. But pruning time is fast approaching; time to prune those fruit trees and vines and many of my shrubs, including the roses. So, soon I'll have to don my Wellies and slog my way out to  do my duty. Some gardening chores just can't be postponed.
     

We grow purple oxalis mainly for its colorful foliage, but I am quite fond of its sweet little blossoms as well. It blooms when the weather is chilly so it is really in its element at this time of year. When summer comes, it generally dies back to the ground only to come out again when cooler fall weather arrives.

The firespike that was blooming in December is blooming still.

The 'Darcy Bussell' rose still sends out occasional blooms.

As does the 'Julia Child'.

And the pink Knockout is flowering now as well.

Next to the goldfish/frog pond the white yarrow is beginning to bloom.

And the gerbera daisies continue to add a bit fo color to the garden.

And, of course, there are still plenty of pansies and violas.

Lots of pansies.

And violas.

And more violas.

And mixed pansies and violas.

The herb feverfew is in bloom. It is a medicinal herb and the name tells you what it was traditionally used for. Personally, I just enjoy the little blooms.

The Cape honeysuckle is always knocked back by the mildest of freezing temperatures, but so far there's been nothing to discourage it and it blooms on.

I had hoped my daffodils and snowdrops might have been in bloom by now, but no such luck. Maybe by February.

I hope your January garden is thriving. I look forward to visiting it. Don't forget to visit our host, Carol of May Dreams Gardens, to see a list of all the gardens participating this month.

Happy Bloom Day!

Past Tense by Lee Child: A review

Lee Child is now up to number 23 in his Jack Reacher saga. I've previously read four of the books, the first three plus number 14. I'm never going to read the other eighteen in order to get to Past Tense, so I've utterly given up on my rule of reading series books in order. Life is too short.

But I'd heard some good things about this latest one and I needed a non-demanding read as a palate cleanser so I decided to go with it.

As in all the books (I guess), we find Jack Reacher on the road and on the move. This time he's starting out in Maine and his destination is San Diego, but on a whim, he decides to go through Laconia, New Hampshire. The town was where his father was born and grew up and he's never seen it. He researches the town records, with help from a city employee, to find where the Reachers might have lived and heads out to find the site and walk the ground where his forebears lived.

Meantime, in another part of the county, a young Canadian couple is also on the move, headed to New York. But their vehicle is about to quit on them and they look for a place to spend the night. They find an out-of-the-way - WAY out-of-the-way - motel. It might as well have a sign out front saying "Bates Motel." They check in, but will they ever check out?

These two story lines proceed on parallel tracks until, finally, they converge near the end. The "Jack track" features several violent encounters between Jack and various bad guys. They always come at him in groups, usually four or five in a pack, and they are formidable. Jack himself is 6'5" and is immensely skilled and powerful. As a former military policeman for the Army, he is very experienced in dealing with unruly characters. Child always describes these encounters in loving detail, often going on for pages. He obviously knows his audience and what his keen admirers expect from him. After reading through the first couple of such experiences in this book, I admit I skimmed rather lightly over the others.

I remember reading somewhere recently that somewhere in the world someone buys one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books every 13 seconds. That is mind-boggling and yet I don't seriously doubt it. These books are incredibly popular and I can understand why. They are easy to read and they are full of action for those who require that in a book. The plots move quickly and the reader can count on the good guys coming out on top, no matter how tough those bad guys might be. 

Which brings up another question in my mind. I wonder what the body count is for all the characters dispatched by Jack Reacher over the years. Has anybody ever taken the time to total up? It would be interesting to know.

Lee Child has perfected his formula and I bet he could write one of these thrillers with one hand tied behind his back. They may not be much of a challenge any more, for him or the readers, but for what they are, they are fun reads. Past Tense was no exception.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Mending Wall by Robert Frost

I've featured this poem here before but it has been almost five years. Time to bring it out again. It seems appropriate for this moment.

The story is this: Two neighbors - in New England, naturally - meet at a given time to repair the stone wall between their two properties. The wall may have been damaged by the freezing and thawing of the ground underneath it or the damage might have been done by thoughtless hunters, but now there are gaps that need to be mended. 

As the two talk, we see two philosophies about walls. One neighbor opines, "Good fences make good neighbours." But the other asks a very pertinent question: "Why do they make good neighbours?"

And he goes on:

   Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 

   What I was walling in or walling out, 

   And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, but there's no persuading his neighbor.  

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

This week in birds - #336

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

Over the past week, I've had a small flock of 15-20 Purple Finches feeding at my front yard bird feeder. (I've not been able to get a usable picture of them so I stole this one from the internet.) Most of my birds have been adult females or immature birds and they look like the bird on the left. There have also been a couple of the colorful males, like the one on the right. Purple Finches are uncommon visitors to my yard. In most winters, they likely do not get this far south, so it is a real treat when they do show up and I'm going to keep trying to get some good pictures to mark the occasion.

*~*~*~*

The strange high-pitched sounds that American diplomats in Cuba have complained about have turned out to be made by crickets, most likely the Indies short-tailed cricket, according to an analysis of a recording of the sounds. This, of course, still does not necessarily explain the range of symptoms including headaches and nausea that were experienced by the diplomats. 

*~*~*~*

The latest census of western Monarch butterflies conducted by the Xerces Society indicates that the California population of the butterfly has dropped by some 86% and is at a new low.

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The lack of staff on duty at our national parks because of the government shutdown is causing all kinds of problems but this one is particularly distressing: Vandalism at Joshua Tree National Park has resulted in the destruction of some of the iconic trees. Moreover, the fragile desert landscape is being damaged by unsupervised visitors. Now, honestly, what kind of a person goes to a national park with the intent of vandalizing it? It makes one ashamed to be a part of the human species.

*~*~*~*

Records from weather radar stations and from eBird reports have allowed ornithologists to calculate that about 2.1 billion birds cross over the length of the Gulf of Mexico in migration in the spring and make landfall on the shores of North America. That number has remained fairly consistent over the last twenty years, in spite of climate change and other challenges facing the birds.

*~*~*~*

The "10,000 Birds" blog reports on the status of Puerto Rico's birds after the two disastrous hurricanes of 2017.

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Record rainfall in the region last year has increased the pollution of Chesapeake Bay. The heavy rains increased runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus that flowed into the bay.

*~*~*~*

At least 40 distressed and hungry seals have come ashore and been stranded in Roddickton-Bide Arm, Newfoundland. Concerned residents in the little town are wondering how to help the confused animals.

*~*~*~*

The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is the Stresemann's Bristlefront. There is literally only one of these birds known to exist which certainly qualifies it as critically endangered. There may be others in the wild but this is the only one found so far. Its habitat is the humid lowland forest of northeastern Brazil. 

*~*~*~*

A fourteen-year-old Hawaiian snail named George died on New Year's Day. He was the last of his species so his death marked its extinction. Other species of Hawaii's unique snails are also endangered and conservationists are trying to prevent their following George's kind into extinction. 

*~*~*~*

Global warming has heated Earth's oceans by the equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years, according to analysis of new research. More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the seas, with just a few per cent heating the air, land and ice caps respectively. The vast amount of energy being added to the oceans drives sea level rise and enables hurricanes and typhoons to become more intense.

*~*~*~*

Those Einsteins of the bird world, the New Caledonian Crows are able to judge the weight of objects by how they are moved by the wind, according to findings in a new research project.

*~*~*~*

I do love cats, but abandoned cats who have gone feral do inestimable damage to birds and other wildlife. In Australia, the Mandurah estuary colony of protected bird species was forced to move on after one feral cat is believed to have single-handedly killed 40 Fairy Tern chicks and five adults in December. The cat, of course, was simply being a cat and trying to survive. The real villains are humans who turn these predators out into a habitat unprepared to defend against them.

*~*~*~*

The current administration in Washington authorized a twelve- mile road through the heart of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Their justification for the project was for transportation of medical supplies. What the road is actually being used for is transporting seafood for sale.

*~*~*~*

Wildlife corridors that allow critters to cross safely over or under busy highways save both human and wildlife lives. A new animal overpass over Highway 90 in Washington state is already serving that purpose even though the project is still incomplete.

*~*~*~*

The migratory habits of Monarchs and other butterflies are justifiably famous, but new research shows that dragonflies can give those fliers a run for their money with their own migrations.

*~*~*~*

Here's an amazing fact for you: An underground parasitic mold in Michigan has been found, by genetic analysis, to be about 2,500 years old and it is estimated that it weighs as much as a blue whale! Now that is some mushroom.

North of Dawn by Nuruddin Farah: A review

Nuruddin Farah is a celebrated Somali novelist who is often mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He frequently writes about the effects and costs of terrorism in today's world and when he does, he speaks from personal experience. His sister, who was a nutritionist working for UNICEF, was murdered along with at least 20 others in a bomb attack by the Taliban on a restaurant in Kabul 2014.

Despite his fame in the literary world, I was unacquainted with him before reading this book. I saw a review of it several weeks ago and was fascinated. I immediately added it to my reading queue.

Farah's protagonists here are far away from the centers of terrorism in the 21st century. They are an expatriate Somali couple, Mugdi and Gacalo, living in Oslo. Mugdi had been an ambassador for Somalia in Norway back when Somalia was a recognizable and organized country. When the country tore itself apart in civil war and descended into chaos, they became part of the Somali diaspora and sought refuge in Norway, eventually becoming citizens. 

This all happened back in the 1990s and Mugdi and Gacalo, along with their son and daughter, made a comfortable life for themselves in Oslo. But their Norwegian-raised son, in his years of rebellion, joined a radical Islamic cell in Oslo and eventually fled to Somalia to pursue jihad. He became involved with the terrorist organization Al Shabaab and assisted in several terrorist attacks. Eventually, he blew himself up in a suicide attack in Mogadishu.

Mugdi is shocked and disgusted by news of his son's activities and his manner of dying. He wants nothing to do with his memory and says, " How can I mourn a son who caused the death of so many innocent people? I explode into rage every time I remember what he did."

For Gacalo though, her son is still her son, regardless of what he did and she had made a promise to him that if he should die, she would take care of his wife and his two stepchildren. She honors that commitment and makes arrangements to bring them to Oslo.

The widow, Waliya, is a devout Muslim, although she had not always been so observant. Mugdi and Gacalo are cultural but not practicing Muslims. Clashes seem inevitable.

The two stepchildren, a boy and a girl, are twelve and fourteen years old when they arrive. Though Mugdi and Gacalo have a prickly relationship with the mother, they become loving grandparents to these two traumatized children.

The war between Mugdi/Gacalo and Waliya is a stand-in, a model, of the global clash between fundamentalism and secularism. Farah writes of this relationship in intimate and nuanced terms. The result is an incisive and withering portrait of a family soap opera. In revealing how a family falls apart, he gives us a representative of how the nation falls apart. It is a powerful story.

Unfortunately, the prose here does not rise to the level of the story that is being told. It is often clunky and less than graceful. There's no indication that the book was translated and so I assume it was written in English but the language often seems clumsy and filled with cliches. Moreover, the dialogue given the various characters, particularly the teenagers, frequently seems dissonant with unlikely phrasing.

Initially, I thought to rate the book at four stars because it is an interesting story with well-developed characters, but the more I thought about it, the more I was bothered by that clunky writing. So, three stars it is. 

Nevertheless, it was a worthwhile read with its view of how the families of violent jihadists are affected by that member's actions. It is perhaps something that we don't often consider, but they, too, can be victims. 

My rating: 3 of 5 stars      

In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin: A review

John Rebus is now pushing 70 and has been retired from Scotland's Lothian and Borders Police for several years. He's been retired so long that the Lothian and Borders Police no longer exists; it's now Police Scotland. But all of his former colleagues are now a part of this "new" police force, and it's not really true that Rebus is retired. Being a detective is his life and he won't retire until that final exit music plays and he draws his last breath.

He keeps his hand in because his former colleagues, especially his former partner and protege, Siobhan Clarke, often call on him for his expertise regarding Edinburgh crime and criminals and for his memories regarding particular cases that he worked in the past. And that's where this story begins.

Some teenage boys messing around in the woods come upon a rusted out car hidden under brush. In the boot of the car is a skeleton. Police are called and the skeleton is finally identified as that of a private investigator named Stuart Bloom who had disappeared a few years earlier. Rebus had worked on that earlier missing person case and it had never been resolved. A review of that case now finds some slipshod work and errors that should never have happened. Malcolm Fox of internal investigations is on the case and finds that Rebus may not have been as diligent in his investigation as he should have been.

Meanwhile, Siobhan Clarke is assigned to the (now) murder case and she questions Rebus about how it all went down years before. She also asks his help on another case of hers - a young man who was convicted of unlawful killing (which he admitted to) and was sent to prison. Siobhan has misgivings about the case and wants a second opinion.

Suddenly, the old retiree has a full plate of mysteries on which to chew. He couldn't be happier.

Inevitably it seems, his reviews and his memories lead him back to his old nemesis "Big Ger" Cafferty, always the one who got away for Rebus. The two established a grudging relationship over the years, even becoming drinking buddies back in the day when Rebus was a drinker. All that, along with the constant smokes, is behind him now as he struggles with COPD. 

One of the great charms of this series has always been the believability of its characters. These are not supermen or superwomen. They are all too human, but they do take pride in the work they do and they try to do it to the best of their abilities. Even those like Rebus who never felt constrained by rules and who cut corners.

A part of that believability factor has been the aging of Rebus, which has occurred more or less in real time along with the series that began way back in 1987 with Knots and Crosses. This is the twenty-second entry in that series and, even though some books are better than others, the quality has never faded. It's interesting to see Rebus now dealing with the problems of aging and I look forward to seeing how Rankin continues the series for - it is hoped - many more years.

As for this particular book, for me it was a five-star read, near perfect. I can't think of anything about it of which I can complain.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars