An unflinchingly raw debut about fate, faith, and female resistance.

Set over the course of two decades in Lagos, Nigeria, Tola Rotimi Abraham skilfully delves into the heart and mind of a young family wounded by the abandonment of their mother. Abraham does not shy away from difficult topics, including those surrounding oppression, poverty, and political corruption, but tackles them with a strong sense of sincerity and grace, revealing each of her protagonists’ deepest aches and desires.

A slow read but nevertheless a worthy one.

When I started to read, I didn’t know what to expect. I enjoy the fact I was able to follow the story of siblings through 20 years, however, I was getting confused by reading the story told by four different characters.
I must admit I was curious how the book will end and I really appreciate how the relationship between men and women was shown, mostly its complexity.
Maybe I am not in the right mind-set at the moment, but the lack of connection between the stories of siblings and just occasional glance at their life played a big role for me and led to a bit of a disappointment.

A chapter or two in, I wasn't expecting much from this book but then it grabbed me and I was genuinely sad for it to come to an end.

Told in alternating pov, the story spans 20 years in the lives of twins Ariyike and Bibike and their younger brothers Andrew and Peter.

I loved how the story ebbed and flowed as it dipped into each child's life, sometimes years since you had last heard from them. At times, the siblings stories felt a little disconnected from eachother - it would have been nice for there to be more connections and references to siblings in each story.

I will definitely be looking out for any future books by this author.

Thank you NetGalley and Cannongate Books for the opportunity to review this book.

Set in Lagos, Black Sunday is a tale of four children attempting to overcome the misfortune placed upon them by their parents. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, for even though the novel is elegantly crafted to give us the perspectives of all four siblings, each chapter feeling like a contained story in and of itself, there is a real drive to the story as we eagerly turn the pages to find out what will happen to these children next.

Originally from a middle-class, educated family, their mother loses her job. Shortly afterwards their father is swindled out of all of his money by a pastor at their church and the family are left destitute. Their mother runs away to New York, leaving them behind with their father who soon abandons them to his mother. Their easy life is now filled with the worry of money and hunger.

Each sibling takes the loss of their parents differently. Peter is the youngest. He loses his hand because no one takes him to hospital after an accident and ultimately finds solace in words:
‘Poems are tears of the soul. You had never imagined that poems could help a person survive. Then you read “Nightfall of Soweto” by Oswalk Mtshali, then you read “Letter to Martha” by Dennis Brutus. Then you read.’

Both brothers are sent away to boarding school when their sisters begin to earn enough and Andrew’s inability to speak to fathers leaves him unable to save his girlfriend from rape. The twin sisters, Bibike and Ariyike, are the oldest and they soon take on the responsibilities of earning money. Their experience of Lagos is heavily coloured by their sex. Every encounter with the world involves negotiating male desire. At one point, Bibike says,
‘All women are owned by someone, some are owned by many; a beautiful girls’ only advantage is that she may get to choose her owner. If beauty was a gift, it was not a gift to me, I could not eat my own beauty, I could not improve my life by beauty alone. I was born beautiful, I was a beautiful baby. It did not change my life. I was a beautiful girl. Still, my life was ordinary. But a beautiful woman was another type of thing. I had waited too long to choose my owner, dillydallying in my ignorance, and so someone chose me. What was I to do about that?’

While their paths are different, all the narratives are suffusing by a love of storytelling. They tell each other stories, or riddles. They listen to their grandmother telling them all the old tales and these tales are valued. The idea of the importance and softness of their Grandmother’s Ondo Yoruba dialect lifts the hunger and effort of their lives into something magical. It is this love of storytelling that makes the novel itself such a delight to read.

Black Sunday is eloquent, painful, funny and written with such a sharp eye for detail and love of language you’d be hard-pressed not to love it. A fabulous debut out this August, I'm already eager to see what Tola Rotimi Abraham writes next.

Black Sunday is the tale of twin sisters and their two younger brothers living in Lagos, Nigeria. After they are abandoned by their parents and move in with their rather traditional grandmother, we here from each of them over a period of a decade or so.

I liked but I didn't love this book. The siblings' stories were too disjointed for me with too few linking storylines. I liked the girls' stories better than those of their brothers. I most enjoyed the vignettes of Lagos life, the squeezing into little buses, the selling water in bags to stopped traffic and scenes like that. I didn't find myself very engaged by any of the characters.

There's one very odd chapter delivered in the second person which broke the flow of the narration and felt very much out of place.

As an introduction to the many and varied ways that life as an effective orphan in a touch city and kick you, it's an interesting book. But for me, it wasn't one that kept me yearning for each successive chapter as I passed through it.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a free ARC.

I found the story of this Nigerian family set in Lagos, engrossing I was disappointed to finish it. Quite a unique format, telling the story from each of the 4 children's perspective, without needing to cover the years continuously. The richness and colour of each individual and each scenario, leaped from the page. I would highly recommend this as an engrossing read

Black Sunday follows the children of a fractured family who end up abandoned by both parents to live with their Grandmother in a poor Lagos neighbourhood. Twin older sisters Bibike and Ariyike are more in focus than their two younger brothers Andrew and Peter. The story is told mostly in first person segments from the points of view of each of the four children with one exception in a segment of Peter's where it was written in second person, which seemed like an odd choice to go against the trend of the rest of the book.

The story spans two decades of their lives growing up and trying to survive poor and parent-less in Lagos and how they each find different ways to carve out their own futures. The girls start working to put their brothers through school and University; Ariyike becoming a famous Christian radio presenter and later moving to Christian TV with the very same church who conned her father out of their family home and destroyed their lives.

Some sections seem a little stilted in the prose, however it's important to remember these are being told from the point of view of children. As the four grow up the prose becomes more smooth as the characters are maturing. The story can be difficult to digest as it demonstrates the personal suffering of this family and even moreso the suffering of the twin sisters as girls and women growing up in a deeply misogynistic, male-dominated society.

Within the blurb for the book it mentions: "the twins’ paths diverge once the household shatters: one embracing modernity as the years pass, the other consumed by religion." I had this in mind as I read through the book and I was expecting one sister to stay with their Yoruba grandmother (one does) and for that to be the one 'consumed by religion'. However, to me it seemed the sister consumed by religion was also the one who embraced modernity - embracing modern technology and the movement of power into the use of those technologies. Each sister seems to embrace modernity in a different way and both have religion in their lives to a greater or lesser extent. It is not quite as clear-cut as the blurb might imply.

The ending of the book initially seemed a little flat to me but after thinking about it for a little while I feel it does provide what I was after, only much more subtly than I was expecting. That is a common theme with the book, there is a lot happening that is big, bold and obvious, smacking you in the face but underneath there is a lot working subtly in the background that might take you a little longer to recognise and appreciate.

Set in Lagos towards the end of the 90s, Black Sunday depicts the lives of four siblings: twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike and younger brothers, Peter and Andrew. Told through their alternating voices, Tola Rotimi Abraham quickly evokes the sun-drenched charm, industry and calamity that fill the streets and the children's lives.

Though, at the beginning of the book, the family appear a certain centre of nurture and love in the whirling chaos of Lagos streets, their lives quickly unravel as Father makes a series of bad investments and as Ariyike relates: "In the end our mother was just the first to leave. My family unraveled rapidly, in messy loose knots, hastening away from one another, shamefaced and lonesome, injured solitary animals in a happy world."

Initially, the twins turn to one another; seeing their capable selves reflected back. They study and care for the brothers and are reassured by the other's constancy; "I knew that she felt all the things that I felt...we were the same sad the same angry the same afraid."

However, life steers the young women in different directions and soon, the rift that forms seems exaggerated by their previous bond.

Indeed, it is Bibike and Ariyike's voices that have stuck with me since finishing the novel. Both strong, vibrant individuals, their struggles raise issues surrounding: the subjugation of women; the responsibilities of family and the impact on an individual's right to make their own mark on the world. At the same time, Abraham examines the way religion can be manipulated to raise people's profiles and influence, particularly when others so desperately require an answer to the questions life has thrown their way.
Finding herself in this position, Ariyike admonishes herself; "I know what I am doing, using Scripture for my own ends. It is impossible to spend so much time reading and teaching the Bible and be unskilled in using it as a weapon. Does not the Bible in the book of Hebrews refer to its content as a two-edged sword, cutting and dividing?"

On occasion, I was unclear which of the 'children' were narrating each chapter and felt their voices weren't individual enough in the style and nuance of their language. However, individual paths are clearly carved and Abraham's talent for moulding memorable characters is never in doubt.

My thanks to netgalley, the publisher and the author for sharing and advanced copy with me in return for my honest opinion.

I took me a while to get into the pace of this book. Once I was in, I was caught up in the terrible situation the siblings found themselves in. I was disappointed that we didn't get to revisit the brothers. I also felt that the end came rather suddenly. It is to the story's credit that I wanted more.

When their family falls apart, four children end up abandoned by their parents and living with their grandmother in poverty - a far cry from their previously comfortable life in Lagos. The story is told from the perspective of all four of the children, but particularly the older twin girls. Ariyike and Bibike take on jobs to provide for their younger brothers' education, which ultimately lead them on a collision course with each other.

There are a lot of themes mixed together - how who you know makes a difference, the hypocrisy of certain aspects of religion, expectations of women versus those of men, what family means. It's much more than the tale of two sisters that the blurb makes it sound like, and the bits of fable mixed in are there for context rather than a magical realism. I really enjoyed it, and it deserves all the plaudits.

Absolutely loved this book!!! Would wholeheartedly recommend to all of my friends, and I cannot wait to read more from this author.

Set in Lagos, Tola Rotimi Abraham tells the story of the complex experiences and survival of 4 siblings following the financial ruin of their comfortable middle class life from 1996 to the present.
The main focus is on twins Bibike and Ariyike. Early chapters have titles beginning with ‘How to ...’ and describe solving life’s practical problems in a rural community, but as the girls get older, they learn that survival is much more complex. In a male-dominated world, beset by political and moral corruption, they are on their own.
Each strives to find her own way, one through the beauty business and one through religion, with equal self-belief, ambition and the passion to do just that.
Fascinating characters include their Yoruba grandmother who cares for their brothers and some fabulous descriptive writing.
Thank you #NetGalley and #Canongate for my pre-release download of this important debut.

I have been reading alot of literature from authors of colour recently and was excited to get stuck into this one but debut author Abraham. This story followed four siblings in Lagos who are abandoned by their parents and live with their grandmother. The characters were well written and described however unfortunately there was no plot line to the story and I found it easy to lose interest.

I tried to persevere with this book but I found it quite uncomfortable to read and the depictions of poverty, political strife and abuse were upsetting and sometimes brutal. I do not wish to read this type of issue-lead book at this time.

Black Sunday follows twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike and their younger brothers Andrew and Peter as they struggle to negotiate growing up in Lagos. Their mother loses her job due to politics and their father takes out a loan on their house in an investment which turns out to be a scam. This results in their mothers upping and leaving the country and their dad leaving them all in the care of their Yoruba grandmother, who is reluctant to have them there at all and regularly shouts at the boys and accuses them of stealing. Forced to find their own way in life, each of the four siblings grows together and apart as they figure out how to negotiate life without the parents they once relied on.

This book reads like an observation of life. It switches POV between all four of them and jumps timelines so you get a real feel of how they have grown up and the situations they found themselves in. Reading it, especially market scenes, gave me a real atmosphere for being on the busy streets of Nigeria and the writing style was easy to read.

I did find parts of it uncomfortable to read mainly with regards to men taking advantage of the twins and other women in the village. I feel like in writing it as observational, it lacked emotion in places where I'd have liked to have known more of what the character was thinking or feeling. At points, I wasn't really sure why certain decisions were being made by the twins and the story just continued. There also wasn't really any way to end this so it just stopped with them all grown up but I would have liked a bit more - not a happy ending necessarily but something that felt a bit more like an end point.

This book portrays life with its ebs and flows and shows that it doesn't always end up how you predicted and sometimes you just have to deal with what life throws at you. I do generally like books like this so I did like reading this, I just would have liked a bit more emotional depth.

This is not an easy book to read - neither in it’s subject matter nor in the way it’s written. It’s the story told from the perspective of 4 children, two twin girls and their two bothers growing up in Nigeria. The initially fairly well off family meet hard times and the children are abandoned by their parents. It is a bleak story and the telling of it quite disjointed. For me it didn’t flow and sadly I felt little empathy for the characters. Worthy of a read for an insight to a different world but I didn’t really enjoy it.

As a debut novel this packs a punch; Black Sunday was a riveting read. Twin sisters shook by the world around them. Fate and strife, linger around these characters. Poverty runs riot. The relationships within families and between man and woman are disected and laid out for all to see. The choices these characters make are, at times, startling and satisfying.

I enjoyed how the chapters moved from character to character, providing a different perspective as the story progressed. Whilst the places included are fictional, the places seemed real and believable.

I look forward to reading future novels by Tola Rotimi Abraham.

Black Sunday is set in Lagos, Nigeria and follows the lives of four siblings (twin girls and their two younger brothers). After their mother leaves suddenly, their once comfortable lives take an unexpected turn.

The story is split into four separate parts and each chapter is dedicated to the POV of one of the siblings. I was engrossed in each of these chapters but I was disappointed at the end of each one, due to the fact that it then jumps to the next character. Events that happen are sometimes touched on again but often very briefly. It left me wanting more! It was also disappointing that the two brothers didn't have a final chapter each, so I feel that their story was cut short.

I did enjoy the ending, it was a twist that I wasn't expecting but again, I feel the story wasn't finished here.

Overall, I found Black Sunday an interesting read. It covers many uncomfortable topics but I found each character compelling (especially Bibike and Ariyike) and wanted read more. Unfortunately, I found each character's story too brief to give 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC of this book.

This book made me want to read and read and read. I particularly enjoy that Tola Rotimi Abraham uses fables or scripture as an accompaniment for each morally questionable section of the storyline. Her writing, and the segments they follow, make you want to learn more about the Yoruba legends if you have not come across them before. The family relationships are interesting and although it was a welcome surprise to have chapters written from the brothers’ POV, the story does not explore the twins’ relationship as much as I expected and hoped (from reading the blurb).

The exploration of gender dynamics in Lagos, particularly when it comes to Ariyike’s decisions later in her life alongside religion, is eye-opening and at times, quite rightly uncomfortable. Abraham manages to perfectly balance these tougher moments with the fables, without detracting from the heavy emotion. There’s a toughness that is portrayed in all of Abraham’s female characters, in spite of, or maybe because of their unfair amount of adversity compared to their male counterparts. I would read another of her books exploring the strength of these female characters in a heartbeat.

Reviewed in return for a digital copy via NetGalley.

I feel that I am out of step with the other reviewers to date, as this book did not have much of an impact on me. I love to read literature set in faraway places but this one did not bring the setting alive for me, and because I could not place the characters firmly in their world, I did not understand them well enough to warm to them.

The book feels like a series of disjointed chapters dealing with more or less fragmented episodes in the siblings' lives, and on putting the book down I did not feel inspired to pick it up again.