Their Monstrous Hearts

A classic scenario—the naive heir to a family estate is imperiled by its morbid secret legacy—is the foundation for Turhan’s uneven dark fantasy debut. Twenty-year-old Riccardo is a struggling writer living in Paris when he’s notified that he is the sole inheritor of his estranged grandmother Perihan’s fortune. After relocating to her villa in Milan, he chances upon a lengthy memoir left by Perihan that recounts her transformation over the decades from a poor Turkish immigrant to a popular Milanese socialite. This narrative quickly overtakes the frame story, detailing Perihan’s adoption of a fey foundling from another realm. The child’s magical tears—and his and Perihan’s propagation of butterflies that can miraculously facilitate the rebirth of the dead—are a clue to the terrifying fate Riccardo has been lured to. Turhan relates Perihan’s sprawling memoir in colorful fairy tale fashion, but it so dominates the text that the contemporary story in which it’s embedded seems underdeveloped by comparison. The bumpy narrative eventually culminates in a flashy B-movie ending. Only devoted fans of gothic melodrama need apply. (Apr.)