You might not believe in the curse, but what if the curse believes in you?
The above is a line from Oyinkan Braithwaite’s book, Cursed Daughters.
”The curse” refers to the fact that, centuries ago, a beautiful woman in Nigeria had her sights set on a man she wanted to marry. When he didn’t return her interest, Feranmi managed to corner him into a shotgun marriage.
Unfortunately, he already had a wife and she was NOT happy about this development. Although the husband took care of Feranmi financially, Wife #1 swore he would never return to that house, and that her entire female line would be cursed to never find a man who would stay with them.
Feranmi laughs it off, but sure enough, the husband leaves with Wife #1 and never returns.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and Feranmi’s female line is convinced they are cursed.
The book centers on Monife and Eniiyi, Monife’s cousin’s daughter.
The book starts with Monife committing suicide, then it jumps back and forth in time from Monife growing up and falling in love to Eniiyi growing up and falling in love.
Monife is dealing with the curse while trying to deny the existence of the curse. She believes in the love between her and Kalu. At the same time, she’s always keeping one eye on the curse.
Eniiyi is born the day Monife is buried and Monife’s mother, Bunmi, decides this means Eniiyi is her daughter reincarnated. She even calls her Monife.
Ebun is Bunmi’s niece and Eniiyi’s mother and she is determined that Eniiyi will be her own person and live her own life. She is not happy about her aunt inserting herself into the raising of her daughter, but what can she do?
Nigeria is still very much a place where respecting one’s elders is a priority in the culture. It doesn’t help that Bunmi lives with Ebun, Eniiyi, and Ebun’s mother, Kemi, so keeping any sort of distance between her daughter and her aunt is basically impossible.
While the story focuses on Monife and Eniiyi, we also get a sense of how the curse has affected Bunmi and Kemi.
Bunmi got married, moved to England with her husband, birthed him two children, including a son, so she thought she was set for life. She tried to be everything her husband wanted, only for her husband to leave her for a woman who is everything Bunmi never knew she needed to be.
So Bunmi packs up and heads back to Nigeria with her two kids. She works as a headmistress at a local school, but remains obsessed with getting her husband back. She repeatedly pays a local homeless woman who claims to know magic to help her work spells to bring her husband back.
Monife and Ebun are constantly aggravated by Bunmi’s insistence on throwing away money on hocus pocus that will never work, but Bunmi is committed. When you’ve tried everything, but you still refuse to give up, what’s left other than to try magic?
Despite her frustration with her mother, Monife practices her own kind of magic. Every time Kalu leaves her, she asks him to give her something of his, then she buries it under a tree in her backyard as her way of trying to ward off the curse.
When things start to go south with Kalu, she gives in and goes for a remedy to the same woman who’s been conning her mom out of all her disposable income.
Kemi has taken the opposite approach. She was married a few times, but her husbands kept leaving her. When she gets pregnant by her doctor, she moves with the baby, Ebun, to her family home. Fortunately the family home was extended a generation or two ago to accommodate all the daughters returning home, which they eventually did. It’s one of those hope-for-the-best-but-plan-for-the-worst situations.
From then on, Kemi is always going out with a new man and getting the men to pay her bills. When they stop, she goes out and finds a new man. Instead of trying to fight the curse, she makes it work for her, and I kind of admire that about her.
Ebun is the one who says she doesn’t believe in the curse, leading to Monife saying, “But what if the curse believes in you?”
I wish we had gotten more of the story from Ebun’s perspective. We get a few chapters when Eniiyi is born, and then when Eniiyi is a baby and a small child, but because the story of Ebun and Monife growing up and falling in love focuses on Monife, we don’t get to see what’s going on with Ebun. Who’s the father? Where did she meet him? What was their relationship like? We don’t know.
Eniiyi’s story deals with the curse, but she’s more preoccupied with the idea that she might be Monife reincarnated.
And there’s a magical dog!
The dog doesn’t seem to play a big role in the events of the book, but it somehow manages to live for almost 30 years!!! It only dies of old age right after Eniiyi leaves Nigeria for England for better job prospects. Also, the dog’s name is Sango, and apparently Sango is the Yoruba god of thunder, lightning, fire, and justice.
Clearly the dog is somehow linked to the curse, but since it never seems to do anything magical (other than live 3 doggie lifetimes), it’s not clear how it’s linked to the curse…
The book deals with love and loss and family and self-fulfilling prophecies. It asks if our lives are really our own, or is everything decided for us? I was completely engrossed by this book and I’m so glad I read it.