A complex meditation on Black history with a Mephistophelian twist.
A multigenerational family saga in which the Devil plays a leading role.
Fayne’s ambitious debut novel attempts to capture the Black experience through one family, across the long reach of history and geography, much like Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016) and Ayana Mathis’ The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (2013). Here the story opens in the early days of American slavery, as a woman named Yetunde, captured and sent to the Laurent family plantation in western Tennessee, makes a deal with the Devil for her survival. (The Devil, for his part, has cut a deal with Jesus to watch over Black people in the hopes of returning to God’s good graces: “That’s why Black people have to go through hell to get free.”) In the generations that follow, characters will indeed endure, but not without struggle. Yetunde, and her trademark yellow dress, will weave through the story as a spectral reminder of enslavement. The Laurent clan splits in two, Black and white, and various descendants attempt to find their place in the world as preachers, musicians, and artists. But though it’s a meditation on race, concerned with slavery and the Great Migration—later sections are set in Chicago—the book is not overtly about racism, but focuses more on troubled (sometimes forbidden) relationships. Fayne’s characters are often navigating a mesh of passions, faith, and family, recycled across the generations; Lucy, an aspiring artist seduced by her female teacher, has to make a difficult compromise to enter the art world like those that others did in different contexts. The novel’s structure is busy and at times melodramatic, owing as much to soap operas as to Zora Neale Hurston. But the prose is consistently crisp and suffused with a feeling of hauntedness.
A complex meditation on Black history with a Mephistophelian twist.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780316575171
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.
A falsely accused Black man goes into hiding in this masterful novella by Wright (1908-1960), finally published in full.
Written in 1941 and '42, between Wright’s classics Native Son and Black Boy, this short novel concerns Fred Daniels, a modest laborer who’s arrested by police officers and bullied into signing a false confession that he killed the residents of a house near where he was working. In a brief unsupervised moment, he escapes through a manhole and goes into hiding in a sewer. A series of allegorical, surrealistic set pieces ensues as Fred explores the nether reaches of a church, a real estate firm, and a jewelry store. Each stop is an opportunity for Wright to explore themes of hope, greed, and exploitation; the real estate firm, Wright notes, “collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent from poor colored folks.” But Fred’s deepening existential crisis and growing distance from society keep the scenes from feeling like potted commentaries. As he wallpapers his underground warren with cash, mocking and invalidating the currency, he registers a surrealistic but engrossing protest against divisive social norms. The novel, rejected by Wright’s publisher, has only appeared as a substantially truncated short story until now, without the opening setup and with a different ending. Wright's take on racial injustice seems to have unsettled his publisher: A note reveals that an editor found reading about Fred’s treatment by the police “unbearable.” That may explain why Wright, in an essay included here, says its focus on race is “rather muted,” emphasizing broader existential themes. Regardless, as an afterword by Wright’s grandson Malcolm attests, the story now serves as an allegory both of Wright (he moved to France, an “exile beyond the reach of Jim Crow and American bigotry”) and American life. Today, it resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world.
A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright’s best-known work.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59853-676-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK TO SCREEN
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