Starred review from December 16, 2024
Windham Campbell Prize–winning poet Lubrin (Voodoo Hypothesis) makes her fiction debut with a thrilling and inventive collection centered on Black life in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora. Each of the 59 entries follow a full-page drawing by artist Torkwase Dyson that incorporates a passage from the 1685 Codes Noirs, the French laws for chattel slavery. The stories place characters in a range of situations, from the quotidian—making yogurt in a German abbey (“Goodbye, Achilles”), meeting a lover in a Chinese restaurant (“The Wild Formulas of Love”)—to the earth-shattering: a friend beaten by police (“No ID, or We Could Be Brothers”), a family torn apart by deportation (“Other Forms of Hunting”). Highlights include the moving “At the Spirito Santo Station,” about two tourists’ encounter with a Senegalese man in Venice, and the incandescent “Black Rhino,” about an orphan baby learning to talk. Throughout, Lubrin plays with form and genre, interspersing traditional narratives with more experimental modes such as dramatic dialogues (“The Boy, the Girls, the Dog, and I Was There”), epistolary exchanges (“Theatre of the Spectacular,” “A Philosophical Question”), and aphoristic writing resembling prose poetry (“Earth in the Time of Aimé Césaire,” “Bad Temper”). Her gorgeous and innovative style shines on nearly every page (“We entered a great expanse, glistening and with every bright colour in every pattern, all networks and perfumes against amnesia”). It’s a monumental achievement. Agent: Samantha Haywood, Transatlantic Agency.