Be Careful What You Wish For

Described by his editor as “one-part Gabriel García Márquez, one part Zora Neale Hurston [for the way she “captures the poetry of Black Southern dialect”], and a dash James McBride,” Fayne’s use of folklore and language informs this ambitious novel that is loosely based on his own family’s history. His story begins on a slave ship coming from Africa to America where a prisoner named Yetunde strikes a bargain with the Devil that will alter not only the course of her life, but of generations of family members in rural West Tennessee throughout the next 175 years. Fayne’s is unmistakenly one of the freshest voices you’ll encounter this season.

Isabella (named after a character from The Decameron) is in possession of a cache of magical spells after her husband steals a book from the village wizard’s collection of tomes. She’s a crabby English housewife with a strange cat-ish pet and talking basil plants, living quietly with her ineffectual husband in an English village. She’s at the point in her life where she ponders, ‘Is that all there is?’ Perhaps a little conjuring is just the answer to her humdrum life. Darkshire (whose memoir Once Upon a Tome followed his career as an antiquarian bookseller) delivers a whimsically entertaining debut that is part cozy fantasy, part novel of self-discovery, and utterly charming.