THE HUMAN ORIGINS OF BEATRICE PORTER AND OTHER ESSENTIAL GHOSTS

Two Brooklyn sisters are raised on the Anansi stories and then realize their parents lived them.

Sasha and Zora Porter are growing up in Brooklyn at the turn of the millennium. They exchange HitClip cartridges and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But their main cultural touchstones are the Afro-Caribbean folkstories their parents have raised them on. Their Jamaican father, a failed writer and abusive husband named Nigel, claims he once slayed a spirit called the Rolling Calf with just a penknife. Their Trinidadian mother, the titular Beatrice, recites the Anansi stories with her own interpretations: Anansi, in Beatrice’s telling, is a woman. The family is pulled apart as each member must walk their own path. Sasha explores her attraction to girls and starts to bind her chest; Zora struggles to make good on the literary promise suggested by her first name; Nigel starts a new family with a White woman; and, finally and heartbreakingly, Beatrice develops brain cancer and goes back to Trinidad to be with her Shango healer grandmother. Their story is told from different points of view: Some chapters are matter-of-fact diary entries, while others take on the dramatic tone of fables. Then, thrillingly, Palmer collapses that distance. Nigel really did face down the Rolling Calf, but the truth isn't as heroic as he would like it to be. Palmer is playful as a stylist without undermining her themes of family, identity, and belonging. However, not all of the book’s sections are equally strong, and Palmer sometimes struggles with dialogue. Nigel’s attempts to speak “White,” for example, are often played for comedy (“Their coconut lattes are out of this world”) but can sometimes make him sound like an AI chatbot. Yet when the family breaks bread at the novel's end, it's clear that Palmer has threaded her narrative web successfully, using a cast of unique characters as her spider's silk.

This uneven but promising debut tells a family fable that rides on its well-developed protagonists.