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Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry―Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is an intoxicating and surreal fiction debut by award-winning author Ananda Lima.
At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.
Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they'll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences–of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging―and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.
With humor, an exquisite imagination, and a voice praised as "singular and wise and fresh" (Cathy Park Hong), Lima joins the literary lineage of Bulgakov and Lispector and the company of writers today like Ted Chiang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
RAPTURE
You probably can't tell by looking at me now, but once, back in my twenties, I slept with the Devil. We met at a Halloween party in a closed-down store space in Manhattan, Union Square, in 1981. I was nursing my third Snake Bite in the corner. Silhouettes danced to "Memorabilia," backlit by a makeshift red-and-blue-neon installation stuck to a crumbling brick wall. The Devil was sitting alone on a beat-up brown corduroy sofa. I was inauguration Nancy Reagan: a tighter version of the red Adolfo dress, black gloves, a wig between chestnut brown and dirty blond, topped with a red pillbox hat. He wore an ill-fitting suit, a faded orange wig, and some bad foundation. I walked up to him and asked what he was, yelling over the music. He said he was the future. I told him his costume sucked. He smiled and said he was often misunderstood, scanning the room as if hoping for a specific somebody else to show up. I began spinning the first thread of his story: a woman in a white dress, a cheap Halloween bride costume, would walk in holding a veil in her hand. I imagined him watching as the woman looked for someone too, but not him. As I thought this, the Devil nodded, almost imperceptibly, as if privately approving of something, but continued looking at the room with that slight sadness, that want. I recognized some of what I'd been carrying inside, mirrored on his face.
I thought my friends had stood me up. In my mind, I superimposed said friends, Michael and Angela, over the scene. Michael and Angela as I introduced them to each other at the company Christmas party the year before. Michael and Angela discreetly brushing their hands as they passed each other en route to the elevator, when I first realized they might be together. Michael and Angela the day I found them in the bathroom during lunch break. Those days, I saw Michael and Angela everywhere. I feared the two dancers in the corner, her arms over his shoulders, his pulling her by the waist, were Michael and Angela. Though it was useless to fear it now that everything was out in the open. If it weren't happening here, it would be happening somewhere else. In her bedroom, in his, in the entry hall of their apartment building because they couldn't wait, in a taxi on their way here.
I downed the rest of my drink.
"Are you waiting for someone?" I asked the Devil.
The Devil suspended his search and looked at me straight on for the first time. Something awakened in my body. Despite his ridiculous clothes, he looked like a 1940s movie star, with that strong jaw, his nose just the right amount of imperfect. It had been so long since I'd felt anything like that. Even with Michael, the hurt had coiled up around that feeling and all but strangled it. Yet here it was again, that fledgling want serpentining up my bones. I didn't want to lose it. I wanted it to stay inside me.
The Devil gave me a sly smile and complimented me on my nice family values. I held my fake pearls, feigning shyness, and sat next to him, then stretched my legs over his lap. I grabbed a cigarette and dangled it from my matte-red lips as I fumbled for my matches. He offered me a light. It was as if he held an invisible lighter: there was his hand, and there was the flame. But it was dark, and I wasn't exactly sober. I leaned in. He moved the fire an inch away from my reach and said I could just say no, smiling as if it were some kind of inside joke. I didn't know what he was on about, but I had always liked dorks. I pulled his hand toward my cigarette and inhaled.
A heat fluttered up from my fingertips where they touched him. It was so unexpectedly pleasant, the sparkling sensation on my skin, the warmth rising through my veins up to my palms. I let go of his hands while I still could. I took off my red pillbox hat, my Nancy wig, fluffed up my hair. I'd recently cut it like Kim Wilde, though my hair was brown. I slid his wig off, revealing his immaculate black hair slicked back. I covered it with Nancy's hair while facing...
Excerpted from Craft by Ananda Lima. Copyright © 2024 by Ananda Lima. Excerpted by permission of Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
You may have heard about books that are letters to God, but what about books that are letters to the devil? In a non-creepy-cult-y-horror-y way, I mean. If you can't think of an example, Ananda Lima's Craft is one that will take you by surprise. The narrator, who simply goes by "the writer," has her life changed after sleeping with the devil. Just for a moment, I'd like for you to guess how it might've changed. Maybe you'd assume the writer would become existential about her fate as a result of her actions. Maybe you'd think readers would follow the writer through a horrific, fire and brimstone Series of Unfortunate Events for the duration of the book.
In reality, Craft is a collection built around the conceit that after this strange encounter, the writer becomes inspired to write stories for the devil. In "Antropófaga," Béia can't seem to pack a lunch despite her best intentions and always ends up eating plastic-wrapped, bite-sized Americans from her work's vending machine instead. "Idle Hands" consists of a series of Amanda's painfully realistic writing workshop critique letters. Sometimes magical realist, sometimes intriguingly ordinary, each story has its own unique pull. In a surreal, hilarious, and tenderhearted way, Craft is an epistolary short story collection that is equal parts for the writer, who learns about herself through her stories, and her recipient, the devil.
There is humor in how matter-of-fact the narration is when personifying the devil (see Beyond the Book). Lima's characterization is both funny and believable, such as, "[t]he Devil loved the DMV." This is balanced with beautiful, poignant reflections. The writer contemplates how it feels to grow up, and the nostalgia one experiences when looking at old pictures: "How those silly nights feel like some freaky moving Escher picture of a mountain peak appearing to get smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, but somehow still there in its full size." In moments like these, readers see Ananda Lima is a poet at heart.
The collection poses an interesting question to its audience: if the intended recipient for the writer's stories is the devil, what does this say about us, the readers? Are we nosey eavesdroppers, snooping through the collection like a little sibling leafing through their older sibling's diary? Are we the devil? Both views are pretty amusing to think about, though the second theory is my favorite. Perhaps all of us have a little bit of the devil inside of us, our morbid curiosity piqued by reading about Béia eating Americans. Given that question about the audience, Craft is tantalizing both in what it says, and in what it doesn't say. As the author writes, "...stories were more than knowing things, facts…It was the telling and the words, the spaces between them." If Craft is made to be read by the devil, who are we? That question feels distinctly poetic, and it's one of many reasons I will be rereading this book many times over.
Reviewed by Lisa Ahima
Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild
Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love
The Hebrew word "Satan" can be translated as "adversary," or "accuser," so in his nomenclature, he wasn't exactly set up for success. Satan, or the devil, is a figure who has origins in Abrahamic religions, well-known in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Conceptually, he has been depicted as a fallen angel, ghoulishly evil, as both an agent of and literary foil for God. Satan is so pervasive in religion and culture that it would be impossible to summarize how this character/being has altered history over time. However, it is interesting to view Satan through a postmodernist, contemporary lens. Ananda Lima's short story collection, Craft, presents the devil as a vehicle to teach a lesson, as a lover, and as a sympathizer. Here are some other titles where the devil shapeshifts into these three roles.
Perhaps the most common way this character is presented is as a vehicle to teach a lesson, but C.S. Lewis takes the cake for doing so in a way that doesn't feel stuffy. The Screwtape Letters is a series of epistles written by an old devil named Screwtape, addressing his nephew, Wormwood. Screwtape mentors Wormwood, teaching him how to tempt humans further and further from God. This mentoring takes the form of the two observing humans as they go about their daily lives, committing acts of sin, much to Screwtape and Wormwood's delight. The novel's satirical flare sparks a layered conversation about how heavily temptation can influence people.
Enough about lessons, you might be thinking. Perhaps that's too cerebral for your tastes. What about the devil as a literal lover? In The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, Addie makes a deal with the devil so that she can live forever. Little does she realize, the caveat is that nobody will ever remember she exists after meeting her. The one being that seems to remember her for many years is the devastatingly evil devil with whom she made the deal. The two ultimately develop a romantic relationship that complicates her pact even further.
Should you be in more of a brooding mood, there is another title heavy on my mind. The devil acts as a sympathizer for mankind in Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer. In this novel, the devil receives a creative shot at redemption by having the opportunity to temporarily embody a suicidal human by the name of Delcan Gunn. Initially indulging in earthly hedonistic pursuits, the devil eventually has to confront the realities of human life, which proves to be a lot more complicated than he expected.
Just like you can choose your own adventure, you have the power to choose your own interpretation of the devil. After all, he has been a shapeshifter practically since the beginning of time. If you're of a more traditional or religious mindset, there is plenty of literature depicting him as a cautionary tale. If you want to channel your inner empath, there are novels about the devil being a sympathizer. If you're downright mischievous, you might want to imagine him as a lover. Whatever you fancy, there is a version of the devil to satisfy your curiosity.
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