Book Review: Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima
Craft is unlike any other short story collection I have read. At times, it felt less like an anthology of tales, than a continuous narrative. This is because of “the writer”, an unnamed character at the centre of it all who happens upon the devil at a party in her twenties and sleeps with him. After their encounter, he periodically haunts her life, and she writes stories for the devil that purport to be about other people, but feel more like thinly veiled pieces of the writer’s life. Writing stories for the devil sounds dark, but this book is anything but. The devil in this story, is not the fire and brimstone monster torturing souls forever, nor is he a completely misunderstood angel, a victim of a vengeful god. This devil is more of an elusive idea, or phantom, guiding the writer through her life, and who may even be nothing more than a figment of the writer’s imagination. And although too much ambiguity can leave me frustrated, here it is welcome and fits the style of the book well.