Craft

Stories I Wrote for the Devil

By: Ananda Lima

Narrated by: Taylor Harvey

At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life, and she writes him stories about beautiful and impossible things.

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is an intoxicating and unsettling linked collection that lures listeners into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil, where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead.

With a singular voice in the narrative-bending tradition of Kafka, Cortázar, and Bulgakov, Lima speaks to Brazilian-American immigrant experiences—of ambition, fear, heartbreak, and home—with equal parts warmth and agitation. Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is a powerful experience: once listened to, you’re as much a part of the stories as they’re a part of you.

The collection includes “Rapture,” “Ghost Story,” “Tropicália,” “Antropógaga,” “Idle Hands,” “Rent,” “Porcelain,” “Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” and “Hasselblad.”

©2024 Ananda Lima (P)2024 Dreamscape

Fantastic Narration

Fantastic narration of a great book!
Taylor Harvey is a wonderful reader and her abilities enhanced the author’s craft!

Not Horror, but not entirely drama

To start, this book wasn't written with me in mind and that's fine. While sold as horror adjacent, it's more like grown up Goosebump stories. You know, while the chills are honestly not that bad but because it's through the lens of a child it's 10× worst than it should be? This is the same, only through the lens of a person of Brazilian descent. Which, again, isn't a bad thing as it a perspective I dont have, however being pretty far left of center a lot of the perspectives this book gives on POCs in America is one I have unfortunately read about, and more than likely continue to read about. While beautiful written I had to put it down as it just wasn't for me. Narrator was great.