Can a curse be eluded? Oyinkan Braithwaite finds out in her new novel
Kerri's pick
Book of the week
In Oyinkan Braithwaite’s new novel “Cursed Daughters,” generation after generation of daughters are cursed to lose their true loves.
Here’s what the family curse sounds like: “It will not be well with you. No man will call your house, home. Your daughters are cursed, they will pursue men but the men will be like water in their palms."
Well, you get the idea.
Curses have long animated literature. There is the curse that Cassandra in the Iliad labors under, where although her prophecies are true, she is never believed.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet endure the curse of a tragic fate that is pre-determined, in part because their families despise one another.
And I find curses intriguing. Can a curse be eluded, or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? What if ancestors refused to acknowledge the curse? Would it disappear? And how does a novelist who wrote a global bestseller about a serial-killier sibling get interested in family curses?
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