Finches

Muffaz’s debut novella explores ghosts of the heart and the home through gorgeous prose. Grandmother Jah finally returns to her small Malaysian village after the deaths of her husband and his other, much younger wife. Despite social expectations, Grandmother Jah refuses to mourn the couple, accept her departed husband’s bigamy, or move on from the fact that their relationship uprooted her from her home. As her son, her granddaughter, and their respective boyfriends help her to relieve the house of the couple’s belongings, specters and visions appear to them, unable to move on from the traumatic events that led to their deaths. As the story unfurls, sympathetic family members and anxious strangers have increasingly distressing run-ins with beings both seen and unseen and the family comes to question all they thought they knew about those who passed on. Muffaz writes with such beautiful prose that the efficient story takes on a timeless feel, moving effortlessly between magic and horror. Woven with a fine silk, this is a story that begs to be reread. (Oct.)