Butter

Jones follows her National Book Award shortlisted The Birdcatcher with a collection of glorious stories and rough fragments. The long title story follows Odelle, a photographer and mixed-race daughter of the vaunted British war photographer Remunda Eadweard as she prepares to photograph Remunda, who was absent for much of her childhood. In “Sophia,” the eponymous married narrator leaves the U.S. for some “elbow room” in Spain, where she recalls her youth among leftist revolutionaries in Mexico (“When I was with them, I suppose, for the first time I felt like a real person”). In Spain, a man follows her, and Jones coyly suggests he might be a private investigator hired by Sophia’s husband. There is wit and more hints of intrigue in “A Spy Story,” a brief sketch of an encounter between two Black women at a Connecticut farmhouse, one of whom is rumored to have been a spy during the Algerian War. When the narrator, a safety consultant for playgrounds, says, “People are always surprised I’m Black,” the rumored former spy responds, “Welcome to the club.” Among the 11 fragments, “Cultural Pluralism” sticks out for Jones’s sympathetic if clunky attempt to give voice to a young Vietnamese woman whose Black American father brings her to the U.S. in the 1980s. For the most part, though, these stories sing. This is a gift for Jones’s fans. (Apr.)