The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories

by Danielle Evans

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

In bite-sized stories that pack an emotional punch, The Office of Historical Corrections is a study of human action and reaction. The thread of history and its effect throughout the stories lend an undeniable weight to the collection. The vignettes are arresting, with an unflinchingly intelligent voice, absolutely unforgettable characters and memorable moments.

WINNER OF THE 2021 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY O MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, THE WASHINGTON POST, REAL SIMPLE, THE GUARDIAN, AND MORE 

FINALIST FOR: THE STORY PRIZE, THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE, THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE

“Sublime short stories of race, grief, and belonging . . . an extraordinary new collection . . .” —The New Yorker
 
“Evans’s new stories present rich plots reflecting on race relations, grief, and love . . .” —The New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

“Danielle Evans demonstrates, once again, that she is the finest short story writer working today.” —Roxane Gay, The New York Times–bestselling author of Difficult Women and Bad Feminist

The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history.

Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice and X-ray insights into complex human relationships. With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters’ lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief—all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history—about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight.

In “Boys Go to Jupiter,” a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain,” a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend’s unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593189450
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	48,142
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Danielle Evans is the author of the story collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, winner of the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the PEN America PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Paterson Prize, and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories. She teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

Read an Excerpt

Happily Ever After

 

When Lyssa was seven, her mother took her to see the movie where the mermaid wants legs, and when it ended Lyssa shook her head and squinted at the prince and said, Why would she leave her family for that? which for years contributed to the prevailing belief that she was sentimental or softhearted, when in fact she just knew a bad trade when she saw one. The whole ocean for one man. Not that she knew much about the ocean; Lyssa had been born in a landlocked state, and at thirty it seemed the closest she might get to the sea was her job working the gift shop in the lobby of the Titanic. It was not a metaphor: it was an actual replica of the Titanic, with a mini museum on the lower level, though most of their business came from weddings and children's birthday parties hosted on the upper decks.

 

The ship-shaped building was a creation of the late nineties, the pet project of an enterprising educational capitalist who wanted to build an attraction both rigorous in its attention to historical detail and visually stunning. To preserve history, he said to the public; to capitalize off of renewed interest in the disaster, he said to his investors. He had planned to build to scale, but that plan hadn't survived initial cost estimates. They'd only ever had a quarter of the passenger rooms the actual Titanic had, and most of those rooms were now unfurnished and used as storage closets, their custom bed frames sold secondhand during the last recession.

 

At the end of the summer season, a second-tier pop star rented the whole structure for a music video shoot, shutting down normal operations for three full days. Lyssa had been planning on having the time off, but when the video's director came to finalize the plans for the space, he'd stopped in front of the shop glass, stared for a minute, then walked in and said, "You-you're perfect."

 

She agreed to remain on-site for the filming and canceled the doctor's appointment she'd already rescheduled twice, giving herself in her head the lecture she imagined the doctor would have if he answered his own phone. Her coworker Mackenzie sulked around the ship for the rest of the afternoon, flinging herself into the director's line of vision without success. Mackenzie sometimes worked the gift shop counter with her, but only sometimes. Whenever there was a princess party, Mackenzie wore the costume dress and chaperoned as the princess-on-deck. Lyssa never worked parties; the one time anyone had bothered to give her an explanation for this (she hadn't asked), it was a supervisor who mumbled something about historical accuracy, meaning no Black princesses.

 

"We'd hate for the six-year-olds having tea parties on the Titanic to get the wrong idea about history," Lyssa said, so straight-faced that the supervisor failed to call her out for attitude.

 

"I guess they must want diversity," Mackenzie said after the director left, using air quotes for diversity even though it was the literal word she meant.

 

The next day, and, as Mackenzie went, genuinely conciliatory: "Maybe he wants to fuck you? He was cute, in a New York way. I bet he thinks you're exotic."

 

Exotic, not so much: the theme of the music video was sea monsters; everyone in it, including the pop star and Lyssa, would be painted with green body paint and spritzed with shimmer and filmed through a Vaseline lens that would add to the illusion that they were underwater. The pop star didn't want a ship; she wanted a shipwreck. Lyssa was just supposed to wear her regular uniform and work the counter and be herself in costume makeup.

 

Most of the real action took place on the upper decks. In two days of shooting, Lyssa only saw the pop star from a distance, through the glass, but a longtime backup dancer gossiped about her during a coffee break. The pop star dedicated this video to an ex who told a tabloid she'd let herself go and looked like a monster in recent photos. The video was about letting herself go, appearing on screen green and fat and nearly naked. The pop star was thinner than Lyssa had ever been in her life. Lyssa understood why she'd been picked and not Mackenzie; they needed someone in the store who could look like she knew what she was doing behind the counter. She was backdrop.

 

But the director did, apparently, also want to fuck her, though it seemed as much an afterthought as anything, the kind of whim that came to the kind of man who always wanted to fuck somebody. When they weren't filming, the pop star and her assistant and her dancers traveled together like a swarm of fireflies, and the director and the tech crew and the hair and makeup artists were left to less glamorously fend for themselves. After they'd shut down for the second day, Lyssa's last day of filming, the director appeared as she was locking up the store and asked if she wanted a drink.

 

"OK," she said.

 

"I haven't been here long enough to find a good bar, but I've got a great bottle of Scotch back at the hotel," he said.

 

Lyssa saw the opening. She had been here all her life. She could tell him where a good bar was. She did not. In the hotel bathroom she scrubbed off the stubborn lingering bits of the green makeup and tried to look as respectable as a woman about to fuck a stranger could. When she came out, he had poured them drinks and didn't seem to notice she was fully human colored again. She took a sip and put the drink down and he reached for her hand, turned her palm over, and began to trace something in it.

 

"Are you trying to tell my fortune?" she asked.

 

"I wasn't," he said. "But I have a lucky guess that you're about to make a man very happy."

 

It was so gross it was almost endearing.

 

The first time, they used the condom in the hotel's romance kit, which consisted of a single condom and a package of after-dinner mints in a tin adorned with a rose sticker. The second time he pulled out, and the third time he didn't.

 

"Was that OK? I mean I know I'm safe," he said, a sentence that in her experience, men who were in any capacity actually safe never had to say out loud. "But are you on something?"

 

"You don't have to worry about that," she said. "I don't have ovaries."

 

"Hmm?"

 

"My mom died of cancer. So they took mine out. To be safe. See the scar?"

 

She turned onto her back and pointed to the faint line across her abdomen.

 

"I'm sorry," he said, placing a palm on her stomach.

 

"It's fine," she said.

 

"You don't have to pretend it's OK" he said.

 

"We don't have to be friends," she said.

 

 

She did, in fact, have ovaries, but she also had a period you could set a watch by and an app that told her which weeks not to worry about carelessness. The scar on her belly was from an appendectomy she'd had as a teenager, and was the wrong direction for what it would have been if she'd had the other surgery. She was not supposed to still have the ovaries. A year and a half ago, her mother had gone to the hospital with what the intake doctor called textbook appendicitis symptoms and died of cancer eleven months later.

 

Because hospice was for people who intended to die, and Lyssa's mother didn't, she had refused to go. She died in the regular hospital, admitted through the ER, which meant even though she'd been remanded to the comfort care team, the doctor on rounds was officially required to come in once a day and report to Lyssa that her mother was still dying. He was kind about it, if not particularly attentive. Her mother was too drugged up to take the message herself, and the doctor was young and seemed embarrassed to be there, which was fair, Lyssa supposed-she too had stopped acting like this moment was anything but private. In the very beginning, when they'd still thought something could be done, Lyssa had gone to every new doctor's appointment dressed like it would be a photo shoot. She had bought clothes she couldn't afford, taken off early from work to press her hair, never met a new doctor without a full face of makeup.

 

There was always something they wouldn't tell everybody, and she wanted to be told, which meant she had to look like a real person to them, like a person whose mother deserved to live, like someone who loved somebody. Whatever information they weren't going to give her, whatever medicine they didn't bother trying on Black women, she would have to ask to get, would have to ask for directly so that it went in the file if they refused, but ask for without seeming stupid or aggressive or cold. She would have to be poised and polite through her frustration, which, thankfully, retail had prepared her for. Tell me what you would tell a white woman, her face said. A white woman with money, her clothes said. Please, her tone said. But eventually all the doctors told her the same thing, and Lyssa accepted there was nothing left to ask for. In the hospital at the end, she wore the same clothes for days and didn't bother combing her hair. A night janitor asked Lyssa if she was the patient's granddaughter; at first she was offended on her mother's behalf-illness hadn't aged her that much-but when she saw herself in the mirror, she realized it was not how old her mother looked, but how young she looked in her unmade state, how creaturely and unable to fend for herself. In the hospital bed, her mother looked alive and vital, only sleeping. They often go as soon as you do, a nurse said three days after they'd taken her mother off food, and Lyssa realized only much later that she had taken the wrong message, that the nurse hadn't meant Lyssa had to stay put or she might miss it. The same nurse pointed out on day five when her mother's urine bag had gone from yellow to brown, told her everything else would follow the kidneys and shut down soon.

 

Death would mean new logistics-administrators and insurance people. Lyssa showered in the hospital room bathroom, using the stinging antibacterial soap in the dispenser. She plugged in her blow-dryer and styled her hair. She put on a change of clothes , a muted-berry lipstick, and a sweep of mascara. When the doctor in charge of rounds came back, he looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. He asked her if anyone had talked to her about her own preventative options. No one had. He wrote on a prescription pad the name and number of the doctor he wanted her to call.

 

Lyssa thought she would talk to her mother about it, and then she remembered. She had to keep remembering, even after she'd seen the body and signed the paperwork and arranged a funeral. Somehow she'd expected the dying to be the worst part, that after it was over she could go home and tell some healthy living version of her mother about the terrible thing that had just happened to her. Lyssa felt cheated: out of a mother, out of a textbook diagnosis where they could have lifted the bad thing out of her mother and sent her home to recover. She was not ready to be cheated out of anything else. It took her months to call the doctor on the referral slip. She went to the appointment as her regular self, washed and neat, but otherwise unadorned.

 

"I don't have any children," she told the doctor.

 

"Were you planning on them?" he asked.

 

"I wasn't not planning on them."

 

The doctor sighed. He leaned forward and made a facial expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace, a face that looked like he'd practiced it in the mirror after being lectured about his bedside manner.

 

"Look, if you were going to try to have a baby tomorrow, I'd say perhaps that was your risk to take. But if you're not planning on starting a family anytime soon, well, you're not getting any younger, and I'd do this sooner rather than later. Take care of your real future, not your imaginary one."

 

Lyssa tried to imagine her real future. She had lived with her mother until her mother wasn't living. She had inherited the house, or whatever of the house she could get out from underneath the second mortgage, which locked her here for now if nothing else did. She could not imagine choosing the way her mother died, given a choice. But her mother had chosen it, had chosen, with her little bit of time left, every painful intervention, every last-chance effort, every surgical and injected and intravenous possibility of survival over comfort. When her mother asked and Lyssa said this is not what I would do if it were me, sometimes she meant you are brave, and sometimes she meant you are reckless and foolish, and sometimes she meant I can't imagine what would be worth trying this hard to live for. The first time she thought about dying, Lyssa was fourteen. She told her mother about the feeling and her mother said, "You'd have to shoot me first."

 

 

While her mother was dying, Lyssa was dating a bartender named Travis. She had been dating Travis before her mother got sick, though not for very long before. They met on Halloween, he liked to say, though it didn't really count as meeting in her mind-he had waved at her while she looked at him over the shoulder of a man in a pirate costume who was groping her and nibbling at her neck. Lyssa was trying to decide whether the pirate's gold tooth was part of the costume or part of his mouth when she looked up and saw Travis watching. Her costume had involved fishnets and a dress that wouldn't have made it out of her closet any other night, but she couldn't remember now what cheap last-minute addition had made it a costume-cat ears or vampire teeth or some kind of ominous hat. It was almost the end of slutty Halloween; last year, even the local college kids had been bundled into cartoon character onesies or dressed as clever puns, covered up like nuns, the real kind. But this was two Halloweens ago, and Lyssa hadn't known where things were headed, and wouldn't have known what else to wear even if she had. Mackenzie had insisted she come out, and then she and her friends had promptly disappeared into the bar's drunken throng, leaving Lyssa to her own devices. When Travis saw her with the pirate draped around her neck, her dress half off her shoulder and whatever costume accessory she'd been wearing long gone, he raised an eyebrow, more a question than a judgment, and when he waved, it felt like Lyssa was snapped back into herself and had the answer. She extricated herself. The pirate pled with her as far as the bar door, but when he realized that following her out would mean he'd have to wait in a line to get back in, he let her go.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Office of Historical Corrections:

“No other fiction I’ve read this year wears its profundity so lightly.” —The New Yorker

“Evans’s stories and their sensitivity to issues around race and power feel particularly resonant in 2020.” —The New York Times
 
“The title novella manages to combine George Orwell’s bureaucratic chill from 1984 with Toni Morrison’s elegant judgments from Beloved.” —The Washington Post

“Perceptively touch[es] on current controversies like cancel culture and the disputes over historical monuments. But these are, first and foremost, character-driven stories, and the arguments play out most forcefully in the minds of the young black women searching for some livable balance between guilt and forgiveness. . . . Ms. Evans is also funny in a droll, puncturing way, as inclined to mine trauma for mordant humor as for sentimentality.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Evans’s propulsive narratives read as though they’re getting away with something, building what feel like novelistic plots onto the short story’s modest real estate. No surprise, then, that this collection concludes with its title novella, about a Black professor who quits her job to work for the city government, correcting factual mistakes in the public record. The story marries Melvillian mundanity with melodramatic suspense. I could have kept reading for pages.” —The New York Times Book Review

“[Evans is] a master of the form, and her new collection is a sharply observed and perfectly aligned universe. With wry observation and an ear for the inner and outer monologue, Evans vividly creates microclimates that examine the ponderous nature of grief, the infinitesimal line between micro- and macroaggressions, and the fog of relationships. An essential read.” —Elle

“Evans is a writer with a gift for the sudden knife in the ribs. . . . I hurtled through these stories and ended each one gasping back tears.” —The Huffington Post

“These stories offer the lose yourself depth of a novel in intense, digestible portions. Evans is blessed with perfect pitch when it comes to dialogue—both in terms of what is spoken and what goes unsaid.” —Tayari Jones in The Guardian (London)

“[A] collection for the moment. Evans skillfully interprets cancel culture, fake news, and political cults in order to craft a unique critique of the country’s underlying racism. The success of the collection stems from balancing the gloom of racism with Evans wry commentary. The snarky narrative voice cuts deeply. These stories are now even more necessary.” —Chicago Review of Books

“Danielle Evans’ dynamite new collection proves a study in the form. Slices of life, each piece in Corrections captures its own mood, hums to distinct rhythms, and locates unique spaces for empathy and pain and catharsis. They’re also delectably readable, propulsive accounts of loss and fear and redemption that twist with O. Henry–level glee. . . . The titular novella [is] a masterpiece of tension and mystery.” —Entertainment Weekly

“These scorching stories . . . take a headlong plunge into the murky waters of identity, race, and love.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“A new collection so smart and self-assured it’s certain to thrust her into the top tier of American short story writers. . . . The hands-down masterpiece of the collection is the title novella. . . . a deftly plotted mystery that  . . . thrillingly leaves the big reveal to the very end . . . Reading these stories is like that amusement park ride—afterward, you feel a sense of lightness and exhilaration.” —USA Today

“Danielle Evans’ unrelenting wit and compassion are on dazzling display.” —Star Tribune

“Every story in The Office of Historical Collections is on point. . . . but the ancestral thriller novella that spawned its title is completely transformative.” —Vulture

“Evans calmly and expertly navigates the limits and possibilities of short stories. . . . [The novella] combines uncommon storytelling with rare wisdom. . . . worth the wait.” —Los Angeles Times

“ The Office of Historical Corrections,’ a novella, is presented here along with other stories that chronicle how history—racial and cultural—continue to reverberate through daily life. Danielle Evans continues to write provocative fiction about people of color, raising questions about who gets to dictate our national narrative.” —Chicago Tribune

“One of the year’s most timely releases. Examining second chances and no-win situations, Evans’ new book brings plenty of pondering to your nightstand this fall.” —Bustle

“Danielle Evans’s newest book further solidifies her well-earned reputation as one of the most incisive, resonant writers working today. . . . Evans will really blow your mind, leaving you to put the pieces back together.” —Refinery 29
 
“The title story, a novella . . . is the most astonishing thing I’ve read this fall.” —BuzzFeed, “21 Best New Books this Fall”

“In seven sly, haunting stories, Evans reflects our madcap world back at us, delivering a dazzling dissection of our twisted attitudes about race, culture, history, and truth. . . . Incisive, nuanced, and deliciously complex, each of these stories proves that Evans is a bravura talent.” —Esquire

“Evans is back with another collection of short stories that prove she is one of the most powerful voices in the genre. . . . Prepare for this provocative novella to stay with you long after you reach the final page.” —E! News
 
“Danielle Evans’s characters are so messy, compelling, and deeply human that you won’t be able to turn away.” —Harper’s Bazaar
 
“A piercing look at race and culture, revealing how we all must reckon with our personal and shared histories.” —Real Simple
 
“Evans tackles her characters’ fragility, fear, and bravery with breathtaking nuance and storytelling smarts.” —Apartment Therapy

“Evans doesn’t hold back in her timely, engrossing, and powerful new collection of short stories about race, history, grief, and culture. It’s one of the best short story collections of the year.” —HelloGiggles

“The stories are bite-sized, but you might devour this in one gulp.” —Good Housekeeping

“The Office of Historical Corrections is a collection of stories and a novella, all dealing with complex issues of race and Black womanhood. But the standout is the titular novella, which imagines a government department that is mandated to correct historical inaccuracies.” —Alma

“Danielle Evans demonstrates, once again, that she is the finest short story writer working today. These stories are sly and prescient, a nuanced reflection of the world we are living in, one where the rules are changing, and truth is mutable and resentments about nearly everything have breached the surface of what is socially acceptable. These stories are wickedly smart and haunting in what they say about the human condition. . . . Her language is nimble, her sentences immensely pleasurable to read, and in every single story there is a breathtaking surprise, an unexpected turn, a moment that will leave you speechless, and wanting more.” —Roxane Gay, The New York Times–bestselling author of Difficult Women and Bad Feminist

“Danielle Evans is a stone-cold genius, in possession of both a merciless eye and a merciful heart. And she keeps getting better.” —Rebecca Makkai, National Book Award finalist for The Great Believers

“A dazzling collection. Contemporary life in Danielle Evans’s stories has a kind of incandescent and dangerous energy: even in moments of somberness or isolation, her characters crackle with heat, light, and self-awareness.” —Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble

“To say that Danielle Evans is one of the best writers of her generation ignores the simple fact that she is one of America’s best writers, period. And to limit her to her own generation overlooks the keen eye Evans has placed on the continuum of American history and all its attendant complications of race, gender, class, popular culture, and representation. Evans wields these issues like a sly, acerbic blade, and she uses it to cut to the quick.” —Wiley Cash, The New York Times–bestselling author of The Last Ballad

“Danielle Evans writes stories that make the world stop. Her work is so good that when you sit down with it, everything else ceases to exist. The stories in The Office of Historical Corrections move and breathe. The book is a beating heart. Magnificent.” —Kristen Arnett, The New York Times–bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things

“[P]romises more of Evans’ wisdom and finely honed ability to tell distinct, compelling tales that also say something about larger issues.” —BookPage

“Evans solidifies her reputation as one of the most thought-provoking contemporary storytellers. . . [she] crafts her stories with a surgeon’s precision. Each detail meticulously builds on the last, leading to satisfying, unforeseeable plot twists. The language is colorful and drenched with emotion. Readers won’t be able to look away from the page as Evans captivates them in a world all her own.” —Booklist, (starred review)

“The eponymous novella that closes the book is a stunner. . . . storytelling [is] gripping on every level. Necessary narratives, brilliantly crafted.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
 
“Danielle Evans brings her usual wit and keen eye to her latest. . . . While every story offers a discrete narrative, recurring themes of pain, loss, fear, and failed relationships give the collection a sense of unity. The title novella is the crowning jewel. . . . this is a timely, entertaining collection from a talented writer who isn’t afraid to take chances.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Evans's propulsive narratives read as though they're getting away with something, building what feel like novelistic plots onto the short story's modest real estate.

The New York Times Book Review - Jane Hu

09/07/2020

Evans (Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self) brings her usual wit and keen eye to her latest collection, which offers seven stories that explore the complexity of human emotions and relationships. While every story offers a discrete narrative, recurring themes of pain, loss, fear, and failed relationships give the collection a sense of unity. The title novella is the crowning jewel, a historical mystery centered around a Black historian whose job in Washington, D.C., is complicated when she is sent on a dangerous assignment to the site of a 1937 lynching in Wisconsin. The rest of the stories, however, are hit-or-miss. “Why Won’t Women Just Say What They Want” is a witty exploration of a male artist’s love life and his bizarre project of apologizing to the women he hurt. “Alcatraz” is a sad, touching story that explores how an unjust incarceration destroys a family. However, “Boys Go to Jupiter,” in which a white college student deals with “collective anger” after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral, fails to say anything of note about race or racism. Despite its shortcomings, this is a timely, entertaining collection from a talented writer who isn’t afraid to take chances. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

10/30/2020

This stellar follow-up to the author's well-received debut collection, Before YouSuffocate Your Own Fool Self, again concentrates on race, culture, and history but also explores relationship dynamics. The title novella examines the personal history of Cassie, a public historian working for the Institute for Public History, a fictional government agency charged with correcting historical inaccuracies, including one Cassie must investigate involving racist violence in 1930s Milwaukee. "Why Won't Women Just Say What They Want" delves into the nature of forgiveness, with Evans deploying formal experimentation to describe a well-known artist's self-absorbed attempts to be exonerated by the women he has wronged. There are certainly no one-note characters herein. All of Evans's protagonists lead complex lives with thorny back stories, even Claire, the white college student central to "Boys Go to Jupiter." Claire clearly struggles with a past personal tragedy, and while this history doesn't excuse her, it may illuminate her reckless and racist behavior after a photo of her wearing a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. VERDICT Evans beautifully captures the multilayered dimensions of her characters, and she's adept at expressing the humor and pathos of their existence even as they make decisions that call their judgment into question. The gem here is the novella, but the entire collection is heartily recommended for all fans of short fiction. —Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

Library Journal

Seven talented narrators bring the complex protagonists of Evans’s short fiction to life. The stories are a dazzling blend of the personal and the universal, a collection of masterfully crafted moments exploring history, guilt, Blackness, womanhood, American racism, and trauma. Janina Edwards gives an emotional performance of the titular novella about a historian unraveling a mystery steeped in racism. There’s a whisper of playfulness in Nicole Lewis’s narration of “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain,” about a woman’s reckoning with loss on the eve of a friend’s wedding. In “Anything Could Disappear,” Adenrele Ojo captures all the uncertainty of a young woman who unexpectedly becomes a mother. Evans’s writing is confident and spare, and each narrator amplifies the power of the prose in her own particular way. L.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

Seven talented narrators bring the complex protagonists of Evans’s short fiction to life. The stories are a dazzling blend of the personal and the universal, a collection of masterfully crafted moments exploring history, guilt, Blackness, womanhood, American racism, and trauma. Janina Edwards gives an emotional performance of the titular novella about a historian unraveling a mystery steeped in racism. There’s a whisper of playfulness in Nicole Lewis’s narration of “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain,” about a woman’s reckoning with loss on the eve of a friend’s wedding. In “Anything Could Disappear,” Adenrele Ojo captures all the uncertainty of a young woman who unexpectedly becomes a mother. Evans’s writing is confident and spare, and each narrator amplifies the power of the prose in her own particular way. L.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2020 - AudioFile

★ 2020-09-02
The author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (2010) looks at loss, relationships, and race in America in short fiction and a novella.

A summary of the first story in this collection might go like this: Lyssa, a woman working in the gift shop of a Titanic-themed attraction, gets a small part in a music video. That covers the bare bones of the plot, but it offers no insight into what “Happily Ever After” is really about: It’s Lyssa losing her mother to cancer, and it’s how being Black shapes—and contorts—experiences in which race most likely seems irrelevant to people who aren’t Black. Most of the pieces in this volume have a similar shape. Regardless of what the story is ostensibly about, it’s also about race because there is no escaping or eliding race. Evans writes about injustices large and small with incredible subtlety and, often, wry wit. “Boys Go to Jupiter” is a standout, largely because it feels so timely. When a boy she’s hooking up with posts a photo of her wearing a Confederate-flag bikini on social media, Claire becomes a viral villain and a pariah at her small Vermont college. On the defensive, Claire goes from being clueless to willfully obtuse and ignorantly hurtful. Scenes from her past add depth and complexity while leaving the reader to decide how these revelations affect their understanding of this character. The eponymous novella that closes the book is a stunner. Cassie works at the Institute for Public History, a federal agency designed to address “the contemporary crisis of truth.” It’s her job to correct the historical record, whether that means correcting a tourist who’s getting their facts wrong or amending a bakery’s advertisement for a Juneteenth cake. When her boss asks her to look into the work of another field agent, Cassie steps back into her own past and into a murder mystery that might not involve a murder. To say much more would only detract from storytelling that is gripping on every level.

Necessary narratives, brilliantly crafted.

Kirkus Reviews