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Mystery & SuspenseThriller

Middle of the Night

Review by Elyse Discher

Bestselling author Riley Sanger’s latest spooky thriller, Middle of the Night, is reminiscent of a ghost story told around a crackling campfire. This missing-person mystery dances tantalizingly on the edge of horror without ever totally crossing the line.

One summer night in 1994, 10-year-old Ethan Marsh invited his neighbor, Billy, over for a backyard sleepover. When Ethan woke up in the morning, the tent was slashed open and Billy was nowhere to be found. Until that moment, the Marshes’ suburban neighborhood was considered extremely safe, but Billy’s disappearance irrevocably changed the lives of everyone living on Hemlock Circle.

Now 40, Ethan is back in his childhood home, after his parents moved to Florida. He’s not alone either; various circumstances have brought the now-adult children of 1994 back to the cul-de-sac where they lived that fateful summer.

Ethan never recovered from Billy’s disappearance, and being in his childhood home has triggered PTSD symptoms like insomnia and nightmares. Then, in the middle of the night, messages start appearing that seem to be from Billy to Ethan. Ethan can’t help but wonder if Billy is somehow reaching out to him from the afterlife, and he becomes obsessed with solving the mystery, a quest that involves reaching out to the people he grew up with—some of whom want nothing to do with the case. There is also a matter of the Hawthorne Institute, an occult research center that Billy was obsessed with the summer of his death.

Despite its ghostly happenings and some genuine jump-scare moments, Middle of the Night never veers into full-on horror. Instead, Sager builds tension by casting doubt, never letting the reader forget that the shadows in the corner could be ghosts—but they could also be products of Ethan’s own mind, trying to protect him from an even more awful truth. Either way, this thriller unfolds with a frenetic, almost feverish pace that will keep readers hooked, even as Ethan’s own hold on reality seems ever-closer to breaking altogether.

Riley Sager’s Middle of the Night dances tantalizingly on the edge of horror without ever totally crossing the line.
NonfictionLiteratureBiography

Loving Sylvia Plath

Review by Phoebe Farrell-Sherman

It is well known that much of Sylvia Plath’s work comes to us altered by her husband, Ted Hughes. Everything published after her death bears his heavy-handed revision and redaction, from her most famous book of poems, Ariel, to her journals. The extent of Hughes’ influence, however, stretches beyond his management of her literary estate to even the basic facts we’re willing to believe about his relationship with Plath.

In 2017, newly surfaced letters from Plath to her longtime psychiatrist, Ruth Beuscher, made headlines. Plath wrote that Hughes’ physical violence had caused her to miscarry, and that Hughes had told her he wished she was dead. The Guardian called the letters “shocking,” and added an addendum from Hughes’ widow, Carol Hughes, that the “suggest[ion]” of abuse was “absurd . . . to anyone who knew Ted well.” Yet though the letters were new to the public, there were long-published existing accounts of Hughes’ abuse of Plath. 

Stockton University professor and Fulbright recipient Emily Van Duyne wrote as much in an op-ed for Literary Hub that went viral, “Why Are We So Unwilling to Take Sylvia Plath at Her Word?” Loving Sylvia Plath is Van Duyne’s longer answer to that question, a deeply researched analysis of how the popular myth of Plath’s life, one that depicts her as an unreliable narrator and subordinates her poetry to her depression and her suicide, was constructed by Hughes and maintained by critics from the time of her death in 1963 to the present. The book examines how evidence of Hughes’ emotional and physical abuse has been repeatedly minimized, erased and outright dismissed by critics and scholars alike. 

Van Duyne’s scope includes the cultural context in which Hughes’ narrative has thrived, bringing in philosophy of intimate partner violence, as well as reflecting on her own personal experiences with an abusive ex. A chapter is devoted to Assia Wevill, a translator of poet Yehuda Amichai and the woman Hughes left Plath for. Hughes didn’t just control Wevill’s story; he completely suppressed it after her death by suicide. Van Duyne also follows the writers who first endeavored to tell Plath’s story, particularly Harriet Rosenstein, who held onto Plath’s letters for almost half a century before trying to sell them in 2017. 

Loving Sylvia Plath concludes with a note of caution about distorting Plath’s memory in a different way through the temptation to “restore” her from Hughes’ interference. That warning’s well-taken—for all the scholarship about her, we can’t expect to know Plath. But we can know her work, which is extraordinary. And, where it remains unaltered, we can take her at her word.

Unearthed letters from Sylvia Plath may have shocked the world in 2017, but Loving Sylvia Plath shows we’ve long had all the evidence we needed to condemn her abuser, poet Ted Hughes.
FictionPopular Fiction

Little Rot

Review by Cat Acree

Like any metropolis where the excessively wealthy think they’re untouchable, Nigeria’s most populated city, Lagos, has a reputation for corruption and a swollen wealth gap. Bestselling author Akwaeke Emezi’s sixth novel for adults, Little Rot, is set in a city called New Lagos, a very different place from the southeastern Nigerian village of The Death of Vivek Oji (2020). When the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s ravaged Igbo villages with lynchings and riots, the privileged urbanites of Lagos found life largely undisturbed. New Lagos shares this high-rise mentality—as if tinted windows are enough to keep one safe.

Little Rot begins with a breakup, as religious Aima leaves her longtime boyfriend, Kalu, because he won’t marry her. Aima seeks comfort in her friend Ijendu, who takes her out dancing, which leads to a night of queer pleasure and then a morning of anguish. Meanwhile, Kalu attends an exclusive underground sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, and stumbles upon a nauseating scene: a group of masked partygoers with an underage sex worker. In a rage, Kalu attacks one of the men, who turns out to be the kind of man who can and will enact his own retribution. Glamorous sex workers Ola and Souraya soon become members of this tangled mess as well.

As in their 2022 romance novel, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty, Emezi writes a killer sex scene and is always willing to slip into the taboo corners of intimacy. But in Nigeria, queerness is illicit enough to get you killed, and this threat borders the whole narrative. Even in the gilded strata of New Lagos, there’s always someone more powerful than you, and everyone is touched by the hypocritical political power of Christianity, whether in the form of an evil pastor called “Daddy O,” Aima’s marriage obsession or the self-flagellation of queer characters.

Little Rot hurtles toward devastation, but even as you anticipate the horrors ahead, the escapist thriller-style pacing will keep you pushing on. Chapters rotate through this cast of beautiful people, who are all endangered and empowered by their entanglements. “You think you’ll never be a part of things you hate,” a woman says to Kalu at Ahmed’s party. “You think you’re protected somehow, like the rot won’t ever get to you. Then you wake up one day and you’re chest deep in it.”

These characters are plunged well past their chests, submerged in realities we might prefer to avoid. With their previous books, Emezi has been heralded for courting duality in stories that are described as unapologetic, visceral and radical. But if You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty tipped over into the light, Little Rot tumbles into shadow. For every arousal, there is violence; for every moment of love, there is ruin.

Akwaeke Emezi’s sixth novel for adults, Little Rot, hurtles toward devastation, but even as you anticipate the horrors ahead, the escapist thriller-style pacing will keep you pushing on.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

King Lion

Review by Lisa Bubert

Meet King Lion, who rules all the happy animals and smiling people below his balcony. He should be the happiest of all in this happy city, but instead has a very big problem: Hidden away in his tall castle, he is an awfully fearsome creature without a friend in the world. 

Not one to let his own kingdom get the better of him, King Lion sets out into his city to find himself a friend. But when he shouts “Hello!” all anyone hears is a “deafening roar.” When he waves his paws to greet a pal or opens his mouth for a large smile, all anyone sees are his “dangerous claws” and “dripping jaws.” 

But one little girl isn’t so sure. Like the king, she is also lonely. Could they . . . be friends? 

King Lion, written and illustrated by Emma Yarlett, promises to be an immediate hit with librarians, teachers and young readers everywhere. The prose lends itself well to a group read-aloud, giving plenty of opportunities to roar and expose those fearsome claws and jaws. This picture book would also provide a more intimate bedtime reading experience, giving children a chance to talk about why the King might be lonely, why people are afraid of him and how it might sometimes feel to come on a bit too strong when we are excited to meet new friends. The illustrations are lively, colorful and provide many Easter eggs throughout the story that compel the reader to stop and pore over the background, smelling the proverbial flowers and questioning the looks on the townspeoples’ faces: Are they happy? Alarmed? Scared? Sad? Loving? 

King Lion is a heartwarming story for the awfully fearsome and misunderstood creatures everywhere.

King Lion is a heartwarming story for all the awfully fearsome and misunderstood creatures everywhere.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryCozy Mystery

It’s Elementary

Review by Jamie Orsini

Elise Bryant explores PTA politics and just how far parents will go for their children in It’s Elementary, her engaging cozy mystery debut.

Mavis Miller is juggling a lot: She’s a single mom, raising her 7-year-old daughter, Pearl, with long-distance support from her ex; she’s overworked and underappreciated at her nonprofit job; and she’s navigating living with her retired dad again after many years on her own. So when PTA President Trisha Holbrook asks Mavis to head up a new diversity, equity and inclusion committee for Knoll Elementary School, Mavis declines—repeatedly. But Trisha is tenacious and eventually convinces Mavis to join the PTA to effect real change, especially for the few children of color at the school, like Pearl.

The first meeting Mavis attends is surprisingly charged: Trisha and Thomas Smith, the new principal, butt heads over whether Knoll Elementary should become a school for “gifted students” and turn away children with lower test scores. That night, Mavis spots Trisha lugging suspiciously heavy trash bags and cleaning supplies to her minivan. When Principal Smith fails to show up to school the next day, Mavis wonders if Trisha snapped and took her position as PTA president as a license to kill. With the help of Jack, the school psychologist, Mavis sets out to find the missing principal.

Genre fans may deduce many of It’s Elementary’s twists, but it’s an ambitious and delightful read nonetheless. Bryant tackles big issues—racism, the complexities of co-parenting, gentrification, bullying and even the difficulties of making friends as an adult—with humor and heart, expertly threading these topics through an entertaining story full of genuinely funny observations.

Mavis is our relatable guide through it all: She’s generous, funny, devoted to Pearl and stretched far too thin. She’s also surrounded by a stellar cast of supporting characters, led by Jack, Pearl, and Jasmine, Mavis’ best friend. Readers will enjoy navigating PTA politics with Mavis and crew in this hilarious and energetic mystery.

Elise Bryant’s It’s Elementary is a hilarious and ambitious cozy mystery set in the emotionally charged environment of a local PTA.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The Island Before No

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

A group of cheerful walruses, friendly birds and an inquisitive cat are living their best lives on an island where everyone says “YES!” It’s a happy existence: The walruses play sand volleyball (aka “Walrus Ball”), wear stylish hats and enjoy delicious treats from Café Donutto. Sure, only saying yes “was not so great when someone asked you to wear an itchy shirt or get a haircut,” but overall, the island’s culture of mutual agreement is working well for everyone.

Then, the Kid shows up. He breezily refuses to consider others’ requests, responding with a shocking “NO.” He even cuts the donut shop line and leaves with a bunch of pastries he didn’t pay for. The proprietor said yes, so what’s the problem?

Well, it’s a big problem for the walruses. They can’t play Walrus Ball because the Kid’s boat is sitting in their net. There are no more donuts to eat (he won’t share, of course). And it hurts when he bounces on the narrator walrus’s back and yanks their whiskers. Alas, things get even worse when more Kids arrive and gleefully wreak havoc on the once peaceful island.

Things can’t go on this way, so the walruses decide to teach each other how to say no. It’s a struggle at first: “I tried to say the new word,” the narrating walrus shares. “But my tries came out see-through like glass, light as dandelion puffs. They blew away in the wind.” But it’s the only way to protect their home. Will their new approach work?

The Island Before No is a super fun read, a visual treat and an excellent conversation starter all in one. Hudson Christie’s art perfectly complements Christina Uss’ engaging and uplifting tale, thanks to its appealing claymation-esque style, skillfully employed pastel colors and energy that bursts from every page. The walruses’ efforts to establish and enforce boundaries will resonate with readers of all ages, from their initial hesitance to their realization that practice makes close to perfect—especially if there are donuts involved. The Island Before No is a quirky gem of a tale that’s sure to elicit giggles even as it inspires confidence.

The Island Before No is a quirky gem of a tale that’s sure to elicit giggles even as it inspires confidence.
FictionPopular FictionComing of Age

Humor Me

Review by Thane Tierney

The British poet Philip Larkin once famously opined that parents “fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.” Protagonist Presley Fry in Cat Shook’s sophomore novel, Humor Me, could find many faults with her alcoholic mother and their toxic relationship. But after suddenly losing her, 20-something Presley is a bit of an emotional wreck. 

On the surface, it would seem that Presley’s well on her way to having it all: After moving from a small town in Georgia to New York City, she’s landed a gig as a production assistant on Gary Madden’s Late Night Show, with a supportive boss and an imminent promotion to talent booker. Like many city-dwelling professionals her age, Presley has a roommate, Izzy, who acts by turns as agony aunt and partner in crime. 

Much like the women of Sex and the City—she identifies as a Miranda—Presley breezes through a frothy sequence of confusing connections with near-boyfriends, drinks with gal pals at local nightspots and career-enhancing forays into the lower rungs of the entertainment industry, where she hopes to discover the unpolished gem upon whom she can hitch her own star. But the specter of her late mother haunts her at every step. 

And Presley is not the only one mourning her mother’s death. Susan Clark, her mother’s childhood best friend, is also working through her grief, with a side of distress over her wealthy and influential husband having been named in a #MeToo-era sexual misconduct scandal. After a couple of semi-awkward interactions (which seem to be the only type of interaction Presley has), Susan asks to be friends, and Presley somewhat reluctantly accepts. The relationship turns out to be fortuitous for both of them: Susan gets to spoil the daughter she never had, and Presley gains some valuable insight into her mother’s formative years. 

Though it certainly has rom-com-esque appeal, Humor Me goes beyond that, navigating the complexities of breaking old patterns, forging new connections and establishing one’s identity. It’s also a bit of a love letter to the City That Never Sleeps, even if its inhabitants do, occasionally to their detriment . . . and sometimes to their delight.

Like the women of Sex and the City, Humor Me’s protagonist Presley Fry breezes through connections with near-boyfriends, drinks with gal pals and career-enhancing forays in NYC, but the specter of her late mother haunts her at every step.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

How to Eat a Mango

Review by Sara Beth West

Growing up in Venezuela, Paola Santos hated having to clear the rotten fruit from beneath her family’s four mango trees, a chore that resulted in an early resistance to this delicious fruit. Her picture book debut, How to Eat a Mango, reclaims this experience with joy through the eyes (and ears, nose and mouth) of young Carmencita as she works with and learns from her Abuelita. Like the author, Carmencita doesn’t like the work of picking mangoes and thinks she also dislikes the fruit—until Abuelita explains, “There’s more to a mango, mi amor,” and teaches her the five steps of enjoying one. Abuelita takes Carmencita on a journey through all her senses and encourages a sense of gratitude towards the abundant goodness of the world around her.

That journey is told in lyrical language, beginning with, “Uno, we listen,” as the mango trees “whistle stories of sunrays and rain and those under its shade.” Juliana Perdamo’s accompanying illustrations are full of life and warmth and color, and combine with the writing to create a lush story that encourages young readers to tune in—with all their senses—to the many gifts nature has to offer. Simultaneously lively and meditative, How to Eat a Mango would make an excellent choice to teach kids about mindfulness. It is no quiet book, however; sensory experiences explode on each page, and young readers will appreciate the way Carmencita connects the mango to her own life: “Mangoes grow up! When I teach Carlitos to get dressed, I feel like a big kid.” Through it all, Santos weaves in the youthful wonder that she resisted as a child, explaining in an author’s note that, now that she lives in Canada, mangoes “embody my desire to go back in time and tell my younger self to pay attention.” With its simultaneous publication in Spanish, this gentle book will remind all its readers, young and old, of the joys of thoughtful attention.

Simultaneously lively and meditative, How to Eat a Mango would make an excellent addition to any series on mindfulness. It is no quiet book, however: Sensory experiences explode on each page.
FictionLiterary Fiction

God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer

Review by Michael Magras

Emergency rooms often resemble war zones, with patients who have ghastly injuries and medical personnel needing to make quick decisions. Joseph should know: An employee at an understaffed trauma center in Philadelphia—or, as he calls it, a “northeastern middling city”—he’s also an Iraq War veteran. And he has a complicated family life with its own set of distresses, including a series of ex-lovers and a mother who once asked him to kill her boyfriend. The memoirist Joseph Earl Thomas (Sink) integrates all of these elements in his dazzling debut novel, God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer.

Yes, that Otis Spunkmeyer, the purveyor of cookies and muffins. Pastries play a supporting role in this work, both as junk food Joseph and fellow soldiers enjoyed in Iraq, “the only good thing we got for free besides tinnitus,” and as snacks proffered to emergency room patients. The treats provide comfort of a sort to ease the pain of the challenges Joseph, his patients, his family and his colleagues have to face.

Joseph shares custody of his children with an ex-spouse but has to pay child support. His father, who abandoned his family long ago, is so unfamiliar to Joseph that he and his mother have to look up his father’s mugshot online to recall what he looks like. And there’s Joseph’s mother, who was addicted to cocaine when he was young and who is often incarcerated, “most prominently for drug possession, prostitution, and then assault.”

Thomas expertly employs a stream-of-consciousness style, rapidly toggling between encounters with family, the patients who come through the ER, and Joseph’s coworkers, among them Ray, who wants to be an artist and served beside Joseph overseas. The style seamlessly shifts as well, blending dialogue and slang into formal, literary prose. Graphic material—detailed depictions of injuries and of sex—is handled beautifully and feels true to the characters.

The result is a kaleidoscopic tour through Joseph’s eventful life. God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer is an intricate and brave debut that readers will savor.

God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer is a kaleidoscopic tour through the eventful life of an ER worker, father and Iraq War veteran by memoirist Joseph Earl Thomas (Sink).
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

Hombrecito

Review by Laura Sackton

In their haunting debut novel, Hombrecito, Santiago Jose Sanchez illuminates the hidden. The story begins in Ibagué, Colombia, a city that the protagonist, Santiago, returns to again and again, in dreams, memory and reality. Santiago is a young boy trying to make sense of a world he doesn’t understand: his absent father, his mother who sometimes “forgets she is a mother,” his feelings of alienation and otherness. When he moves with his mother and brother to Miami, those feelings continue to grow, even as he begins to embrace his queerness.

Sanchez traces Santiago’s search for belonging as he grows up and eventually leaves home for college in New York. The story follows the expected beats of a queer coming-of-age novel, but does so at a slant. Time moves unexpectedly. Scenes that take place over a few hours go on for pages; several years pass in the blank space between chapters. The prose is intensely visceral and deliberately opaque. It feels as if the narrator holds both himself and the reader at a distance before, distraught and needy, suddenly pulling them close. It’s a heartbreaking pleasure to get lost inside these pages.

Santiago’s complicated relationships with his brother and his mother shift with time, but never get easier. This is true of every relationship in Santiago’s life. There’s his first boyfriend, whom he meets in an internet chat room; his father back in Colombia, who drifts in and out of Santiago’s life; his roommate in New York; the men he sleeps with but doesn’t show himself to. His relationships to places are equally fraught: He longs for Colombia even as he distances himself from it. He leaves Miami but feels constantly pulled back by his mother.

Hombrecito is a novel about the events, sometimes unseen, often beyond our control, that shape our understanding of the world. It’s about growing up amid silences that reverberate into adulthood. It’s about self-destruction and self-denial; about fierce and unconditional love; about the cost of hiding and the turmoil of leaving a country. It’s about queerness and transience and one man’s long, slow journey to find a home inside both.

Santiago Jose Sanchez’s debut, Hombrecito, is a queer coming-of-age following a boy’s life from Colombia to Miami to New York. It’s a heartbreaking pleasure to get lost inside these pages.
NonfictionHistoryCultural History

Frostbite

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

When the farm-to-table concept became widely popular 15 years ago, Nicola Twilley “got stuck on the conjunction. What about the to?” Her deeply researched and highly engaging second book, Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, invites the reader on a quest to understand “what happen[s] between the farms and the tables.”

Twilley—co-author of Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, regular contributor to The New Yorker and co-host of the award-winning Gastropod podcast—spent a decade tracing the history and contemplating the future of artificial cold. In Frostbite, she considers how we got where we are today: enjoying whatever food we want when we want it, but with unintended consequences for our health and environment.

Twilley notes that “Artificial, or mechanical, cooling . . . wasn’t achieved until the mid-1700s, it wasn’t commercialized until the late 1800s, and it wasn’t domesticated until the 1920s.” Now, the “cold chain” is so ingrained in our way of life that we take it for granted. From hard science to fascinating history, major machinery to quirky theories, Frostbite explores seemingly every aspect of our refrigeration-dependent existence as the author visits banana-ripening rooms in New York City and cheese caves in Missouri; travels to China to learn about its booming pork industry; has coffee in California with “the world’s first and only refrigerator dating expert” and much more.

While refrigeration reduced dependence on salt as a preservative, Twilley notes, it reduced consumption of fermented foods and “everyday exposure to microbes,” too, thus increasing gut inflammation. It has also increased food waste, released toxic substances into the environment and altered our connection to the natural world. She contends that “refrigeration was implemented, for the most part, in order to optimize markets rather than human and environmental health.”

What’s a concerned refrigerator-user to do? After all, the appliance is “an underappreciated engineering marvel . . . a reliable, relatively simple box that, without fuss or fanfare, harnesses the powers of nature to supernatural effect, performing the daily miracle of delaying matter’s inevitable decomposition and death.” Frostbite, a decidedly interesting and insightful book by an impressively intrepid reporter, offers compelling food for thought about the role of cold in our lives, for better or worse, now and in the future.

Interesting, insightful and impressively intrepid, Frostbite offers compelling food for thought about the role of cold in our lives.
NonfictionSocial Science

Free the Land

Review by Alden Mudge

Audrea Lim’s spirited Free the Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos nudges readers to reconsider our deeply ingrained ideas about land ownership. Private property, especially the commodification of land, has been a fundamental component of the American project, even though, by design, it has never been available to all. But as issues of social justice become more pressing and climate change looms as an existential threat to our species and immediate threat to others, it is doubtless time to reexamine many of our foundational principles.

In the contemporary United States, “private property mirrors our core social value, individualism,” Lim writes in the magnificent opening section of her book. Yet the concept of owning land is not wired into our genes, but rather an idea that came out of Europe in the Middle Ages. Indigenous cultures had different principles of land tenure. “In none of these tenure systems were individual land rights perpetual—lasting forever—or unconditional,” writes Lim. European settlers mistook Native concepts for an absence of Native ownership and assumed the land was theirs for the taking.

This is just one of dozens of insights that begin to illuminate the way that private land ownership relates to dispossession, inequality, racial and economic discrimination and environmental collapse. Lim has been thinking long and deeply about these issues, and her research has taken her to Native reservations, Puerto Rico, crumbling New York City neighborhoods and aspirational communities in Minnesota and Georgia. Her meetings and interviews with people exploring alternative ways of thinking about land ownership make for fascinating reading.

In her view, community and commercial land trusts, usually held by a nonprofit and stakeholders, offer potential antidotes to some of our land-related ills. One of the earliest of these was established in Burlington, Vermont, with the help of then-Mayor Bernie Sanders. These trusts allow people to buy, sell and pass on houses while the land itself remains in trust. This provided a path for poorer people to be homeowners and build family wealth.

Land trusts are not perfect mechanisms, Lim readily acknowledges. Neither are any of the other alternatives she explores. “There is no pure, single-shot solution,” she writes. But she is optimistic, and that optimism radiates throughout this provocative, enticing call for a changed relationship to land.

 

Audrea Lim’s magnificent, provocative Free the Land illuminates how American ideas about land ownership contribute to social injustice.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Devil Is Fine

Review by Eric A. Ponce

Children who have lost their parents are orphans, wives who have lost their husbands are widows, and husbands who have lost their wives are widowers. But there is no word to account for the immense, devastating loss of a child. John Vercher begins Devil Is Fine from this nameless position, as the unnamed narrator, a struggling writer and professor, attends his son Malcolm’s funeral. In contrast to the lack of words for his grief, there are plenty of words (some more acceptable than others) for his racial identity: mixed, biracial, mulatto, etc. Inevitably, these two aspects of our narrator’s identity—the loss of his son and his biracial background—intersect as he finds out he has inherited a plot of land from his estranged grandfather on his white mother’s side of the family. This land, he soon finds out, is a former plantation. Wrestling with the racial history of the land and the meaning of inheriting it, our narrator embarks on a mystical, profound journey into an unraveling identity. 

In terms of form, theme and voice, Devil Is Fine is anything but stable. Following the narrator in the first person, the book leaps through time back to when Malcolm was alive and even to when the plantation was in the hands of the narrator’s ancestor, with interjections from spirits along the way. One of Vercher’s greatest technical accomplishments is how surprising and urgent this shifting feels as it gives the reader a fuller, richer picture of the identity problems haunting the narrator and a better understanding of how these problems impact all of our lives. Vercher offers no final judgment on the questions of identity that he raises: The narrator has an ambiguous relationship to writing “Black” fiction, which he does out of duty but finds both fulfilling and contemptible, a torn feeling that all writers whose work is similarly labeled can relate to. This instability and in-betweenness mirrors identity itself, that thing we each supposedly have that we can never really pin down, that’s always changing and can never wholly describe us.

Wrestling with grief over the loss of his son and with the inheritance of a former plantation, the narrator of John Vercher’s Devil Is Fine embarks on a mystical, profound journey into an unraveling identity.

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