Back in October 2019, I reviewed a rather unusual puzzle of a novel called 'Unraveling". It was the fourth such by Karen Lord, a merger of serial killer mystery with imaginative fantasy, built out of traditional Caribbean storytelling techniques that take many side trips. I was enthralled by Lord's prose but confused by her story, leaving it an unsatisfying but fascinating journey. Basic research for that review told me that, while that book was a standalone novel, it featured a few characters who had appeared in her first book, 'Redemption in Indigo', based on a Senegalese folk tale, and I wondered if 'Unraveling' would have made more sense if I'd read that first.

Well, it's being reprinted in a fresh edition by Del Rey, so I have my opportunity to find out. I may not be able to fully answer my own question until I re-read 'Unraveling' with this in mind. I think I'm safe in saying that this is a far easier book to read, even with a playful trickster of a narrator who delights in manipulating the reader; as if we're not reading words from a page but listening to an accomplished storyteller recounting the story orally and changing it in response to our reactions. For a while, each chapter appears to constitute a standalone short story, growing into something broader when collected together.

This oral approach begins in the very first line of the introduction, in a glorious apologia reading, "A rival of mine once complained that my stories begin awkwardly and end untidily." That's quite a way to start out and it sets the scene for what follows, not just in approach but in substance. This is, after all, about chaos, a pair of djombi, or undying godlike spirits, trying to impart a lesson to a third djombi by stealing his chaos stick and giving it to a human being, one who has demonstrated to them, without any knowledge that she's done so, that she's thoroughly capable of dealing with chaos, because she happens to be married to Ansige the Glutton.

What I didn't immediately realise is just how thoroughly unconventional this novel is. It's so easy to read that it initially feels insubstantial, just another modern re-telling of an old folk tale, even if it's one that we likely haven't read ourselves. It's a lot of fun to read too, with plenty of humour in absurd situations and clever choreography; that manipulative narrator brings one character to town to look for another and promptly whisks the latter on out at precisely the same time. I found some moments noteworthy as I read them, but far fewer then resonated in my head much later as I started to put this review together.

For a novel so open about being based on a traditional story, almost nothing here is traditional. In fact, that folk tale is 'Ansige Karamba the Glutton' but this novel isn't about Ansige. It's about his wife, Paama, and while he's an important character in her story, he's only a peripheral one in the broader novel. Sure, it doesn't seem that way early on, when Paama has left Ansige and moved to a new town, Makendha, but he decides to follow to take her back. He's completely inept at every aspect of life, even eating, which is almost all he does to legendary degrees. He isn't an epicure, a telling line explains; he's a gourmand, a glutton, someone who eats without any taste to drive the action and keeps on eating, to fairy tale levels of quantity.

Every meal seems to backfire on him because he's a giant baby who has wealth and power but no substance whatsoever, just an appetite on legs, which constantly gets him into trouble without any means to get him back out again. Each backfire is a potentially dangerous mistake and he has no conception about how to fix it, but Paama, whose only obvious superpower is cooking, manages to save his bacon, if I might throw in a culinary idiom, by conjuring up an imaginative yarn that paints him as the hero instead of the villain.

What's more, in the most gloriously jarring moment of the book, when the narrator is done with keeping the two lead characters apart and has the third djombi finally meet Paama to demand a prompt return of his chaos stick, she complies immediately. Sure, she says; here you go. And, just as we have to realise that that sort of response never happens in fiction and, of course, that's far from the end of the story because we have the whole redemption arc suggested by the title still outstanding, we start to realise that absolutely none of this is normal in the slightest.

I haven't read 'Ansige Karimba the Glutton', first collected in English in 1947, but I can only think that it's about, well, Ansige Karimba the Glutton. In this book Karen Lord reworks that folk tale into the starting point to a novel about his wife, who's a middle-aged cook who's left her husband but still plays fast and loose with the truth to keep him from being lynched. How many novels are about middle-aged cooks who have just left their husbands? And, if there are any, how many of those characters are also both professional liars and believable, sympathetic leads?

And how many are so comfortable in who they are that they can just capitulate when faced with ridiculously overwhelming odds. Of course, the correct response to a god wanting something you have, especially when it's theirs, is to give them that thing, right frickin' now; but I have to say it's incredibly refreshing to see a character actually do that for once instead of cleverly manipulating said god to trip themselves up and get away with the loot like some tainted hero.

Of course, this djombi, the personification of chaos, a magic wanderer of time and space who has learned to be completely disdainful of what human beings get up to, is our second lead character and Paama doesn't remotely fit what he expects of humanity. It's really that detail, rather than the seemingly arbitrary rules that govern these trickster gods, that prompts his redemption arc; and that's when the novel gets more serious and meaningful, gradually deepening in effortless style until we suddenly realise we're no longer laughing at whatever stupidity Ansige has got into this chapter and instead philosophising about the nature of things, the true meaning of good and bad and the laws of unintended consequences, all without ditching any entertainment value.

Did I mention the metre-tall talking spider? There's a lot here beyond what I've talked about but it's all utterly delightful and far deeper than it initially seems. We might think of it as a retelling of a Senegalese folk tale but that's only as valuable as placing it halfway between Hans Christian Anderson and Neil Gaiman, in that both are true but not particularly helpful. What this is, more than anything else, is a revolutionary novel that's so subtle that it's easy not to even notice that it's doing anything revolutionary at all. It's friendly and lively and funny and, damn, it did that as well? And that? And, hang on a minute...

All of which is a long way of saying that I liked this book while reading it, appreciated it even more when writing about it and feel like I should really give 'Unraveling' another go to see if I'll get it now. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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