Craft

Starred review from March 25, 2024
Poet Lima (Mother/Land) makes a terrific fiction debut with this stylistically adventurous collection of interconnected stories featuring an unnamed Brazilian American writer who sleeps with the devil himself at a Halloween party in 1999 and continues to see him pop up throughout her life. In “Ghost Story,” the writer’s mother is plagued by visions of her daughter’s ghost, who appears older than she is in real life and who claims to hail from a terrible future. Workplace racism, the omnipresence of ICE, and memories of Gremlins 2 converge during a lunar eclipse for the young immigrant protagonist of “Tropicália.” “Porcelain” finds a lonely office worker meditating on a rat’s unexpected appearance in a Brooklyn toilet. In “Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” the title locations are represented by a woman’s experiences in an all-inclusive resort, New York City’s Penn Station, and the one-story sprawl of Los Angeles, respectively. Lima’s prose is lush and her well-constructed plots are frequently surprising. The stories, and the stories within those stories, connect to some of the cruelest portions of the human experience with uncommon warmth and wit. Fans of Gabino Iglesias and Carmen Maria Machado will want to snap this up.

September 13, 2024

Poet and translator Lima (Mother/land) makes her fiction debut with a collection of surreal stories centered on the devil. In 1999, an unnamed Brazilian American writer sleeps with the devil. After that, the devil continues to drop by at different points in the writer's life. Within this collection, listeners will find an unusual ghost haunting someone's mother, a vending machine that serves up tiny humans, and a metafictive piece that showcases various writing workshop critiques. Though the stories have unusual and even diverging premises, they are tied together by the main narrative of the devil and what the stories say about the creative process. "Idle Hands," the story told through critiques, is a standout example, but the other tales show how all aspects of a writer's life (their childhood, current events such as the 2016 election, and the immigrant experience) contribute to their writing. Narrator Taylor Harvey's placid voice helps listeners meditate on the story's individual messages, portraying the devil as one who seems sad about humanity's folly. VERDICT These interconnected stories centered on the craft of writing are both intriguing and thought-provoking. Suggest to fans of Carmen Maria Machado.--James Gardner

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.