The Atlas of Reds and Blues

Devi S. Laskar’s debut novel opens with Mother, a South Asian American woman in suburban Atlanta, being shot in her own driveway during a botched police raid. The book then moves across her life in non-linear fragments, building the picture of who she was and what brought her to that morning.

Laskar uses short, often single-paragraph sections to build the narrative. The form is the book’s signature. The reader has to assemble the chronology and the family relationships from what gets shown.

The central concerns are racism, microaggression, and the slow accumulation of small assaults that the larger violence finally reflected. Laskar writes Mother’s three daughters with particular care.

This is short, fragmentary literary fiction. Not for readers who want a forward-driven plot. For readers who liked Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation or Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, this is in similar territory. PEN/Hemingway shortlisted for good reason.