Everything Inside

Edwidge Danticat often writes as if her characters’ lives are hanging by a thread, and her latest story collection is no exception. While her searing previous collection Krik? Krak! offered a look at generations of women brutalized by poverty, despair, and the oppressive Duvalier regime, Everything Inside’s tales are more varied and wide-ranging. Some take place in Port-au-Prince, but others explore Haitians in the diaspora (namely, Miami). The characters, which range from college students to grandmothers, also lead diverse lives (which are then upended).

This is not to say that Everything Inside lacks for heartbreak. In “Sunrise, Sunset,” a woman’s dementia nearly leads her to commit an unspeakable crime. In “The Gift,” former lovers reunite, but one has been rendered a widower and an amputee. And in “In the Old Days,” a woman prepares to meet her father for this first time when he is on his deathbed. Beneath all of these tragedies, however, lie glimpses of happier pasts or more promising futures. It is to Danticat’s credit that none of them strike a false note.

Navigating the complexities of human relationships with surgical precision, Everything Inside delivers emotion (affection, angst, and sorrow) without sentimentality and enlightenment without pedantry.