I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

Solà (When I Sing, Mountains Dance) draws on Catalonian folktales for an entrancing story of a family curse. It opens with an old woman, Bernadeta, on her death bed at Mas Clavell, her family’s estate in the Guilleries mountains. She’s attended by Margarida, whose mother, Joana, made a deal with the devil for “an heir with a patch of land and a roof over his head.” The day after the deal, Margarida’s father, Bernardi, a legendary wolf hunter and the heir to Mas Clavell, asks Joana to marry him. She soon notices Bernardi is missing his left pinky toe, so is not a “full man,” but she puts “the devil out of her mind” until Margarida, her first daughter, is born with a “three-quarters heart,” according to Joana. Her next daughter is born without a tongue, and the next without a liver, Joana says. Her first son is born without an anus and dies soon after. After Joana reveals to Margarida the truth of her pact with the devil, a handsome man arrives looking for a wife, and the scheming mother nominates Margarida as the bride. Solà blends lyrical retellings of legends with visceral descriptions of the characters’ maladies. Readers will be transported by this intoxicating tale of resilience. (June)