By Hana Zittel I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness by Irene Solà, Translated by Mara Faye Lethem (2025) “As if in that gruesome kitchen, filled with ghosts, she no longer cared about the things of the past. Entire lives. Daughters and mothers.” Joana begged God, the Virgin, and Saint Anthony to give her a husband, desperate not to end up alone. When an old woman in the village sees her crying about this fate, the woman suggests, “If One doesn’t listen, why not ask it of the Other?” Tempted, Joana learns the spell from the woman to summon the devil and make her plea. When the foul bull arrives, Joana asks for a “full man” in exchange for her soul. The next day she is engaged to Bernadí Clavell, a man whose family was eaten by wolves. Losing his own pinkie toe in the exchange, he has spent his life hunting them in revenge. Joana and Bernadí inherit the farmhouse, Mas Clavell, intending to raise their family there, but the devil soon returns to collect what he’s owed. Joana quickly and cunningly outwits the devil, letting him know that he did not deliver on his side of the deal. Bernadí was not a full man, he was missing his pinkie toe. Thinking the devil was defeated, Joana soon realizes the cost of her defiance. Her first child is born with part of her heart missing, her second without a tongue, and so on, all missing a tiny but vital piece. Some survive, while some die painful, early deaths due to their lacking parts. Joana’s hubris casts a curse on her bloodline as generation and generation of women and children are haunted, lacking, and tied to Mas Clavell. Yet, they build lives together, suffer unimaginable brutality and horror, indulge in pleasure, and remain unable to break the ties to their ancestors. Irene Solà’s novel is a multigenerational epic, soaked in folklore and fairy tales, contained in a slim novel. Demons and witches, wolves and goats, the devil and ghosts, all swirling around one home, mother followed by daughter. Solà’s writing lingers on gory details and meanders through captivating description while still capturing an immense and expansive world contained within Mas Clavell. I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness is a remarkable and strange creation that bends the path of linear storytelling and genre. This is Solà’s second novel translated from Catalan to English, preceded by 2022’s When I Sing, Mountains Dance. Milk White Steed by Michael D. Kennedy A comic contributor to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, Michael D. Kennedy’s debut full-length release captures 10 short comic stories in Milk White Steed. Kennedy melds Caribbean folklore, surrealism, and history in a collection filled with original storytelling and otherworldly imagery. A little boy goes missing when he’s followed by a ligahoo, a shapeshifting monster that travels through drains and can morph into a man or a dog. In a quick series of panels, Duke Ellington fails an attempt to bring jazz to Mars. In one of the standouts of the book, Yellow Bird Blues, the panels all appear in black, white, and bright yellow as a wife left at home by her musician husband starts to suspect his wrongdoings and begins to hallucinate after breathing in mushrooms growing from her floor. Combining simple, surreal, and, at times, intricate illustrations in sparsely colored frames gives Kennedy’s collection a unique visual mark. Each panel stands on its own as a work of art. These extraordinary drawings paired with his otherworldly stories based in folklore mark this collection as an exciting debut from a seasoned creator. No. 140
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