Anjali Sachdeva’s captivating debut collection, “All the Names They Used for God” (Spiegel & Grau), is a gloriously mystifying thrill.
These nine unconventional stories resist ready classification or summarization. Most of them seem to float in time, untethered by commercial or cultural touchstones, making them feel eternal, events that could have taken place 150 years ago or yesterday or could happen next year.
Nearly every story veers in an unexpected direction, though the twist never comes off as gaudy or excessive. These are not flashy tales, it is just that Sachdeva’s creativity is apparently so unbounded that her writing can and does go anywhere.
In “Killer of Kings,” John Milton, blind and elderly, bargains with an angel while writing “Paradise Lost.” A mermaid, a shark and a fisherman combine for the gut-wrenching parable of love that is “Robert Greenman and the Mermaid.” A science-fiction trope — invincible blob-like aliens take over planet — gets an Orwellian update in “Manus.” The lone surviving septuplet in “Pleiades” finds her faith in science tested. And Sadie, isolated and bereft, finds bleak salvation in the vastness of the prairie in “The World by Night.”
The title story is perhaps the most shatteringly powerful, telling of two teenage girls forced into marriage by Boko Haram who discover that survival can be just as intoxicating — and painful — as control.
While this is not a collection of religious stories per se — in most of them, god is not explicitly mentioned at all — they do all hinge on some display of belief or faith or longing, be it for salvation, a husband, happiness or simply an answer.
But as Sachdeva memorably reminds us, trust risks betrayal. Mercy and compassion and logic do not always attend to those who pray for them, or cherish them. Or even to those who deserve them the most.
