Grief on Repeat

Namwali Serpell's second novel rewires the way we think about loss.

PAUSE, FOR A MOMENT, and furrow your brow. Take a glance in the mirror. Notice how this wrinkling was created by two lines, perhaps similar in appearance but certainly not identical. And yet, when the two brows converge, they reach the same destination: the dead center of your forehead. To furrow is to fold two paths into each other until they are one; in other words, to furrow is to accept fate. This is precisely the premise of Namwali Serpell's provocative second novel.

The first half of The Furrows: An Elegy follows C, a young biracial girl in Baltimore who witnesses the death of her younger brother, Wayne, when she is 12 years old. The plot is seemingly simple, yet Serpell's expert use of repetition makes it feel dynamic and unpredictable, even as she is retelling the same basic story: Wayne dies-sometimes via drowning, sometimes in a fall, sometimes when hit by a car-and C is the only one to see it. There is a mysterious white man nearby who helps C in the aftermath each time. There's never a body. C's father grows distant, eventually starting a new family, while C's mother becomes convinced her son is still alive. A decade or so later, C will run into Wayne on the street; but just as the two meet, the story ends abruptly, and Serpell is on to the next retelling.