Bitter
by Akwaeke Emezi
High School    Knopf    272 pp.    g
2/22    978-0-593-30903-2    $17.99
Library ed.  978-0-593-30904-9    $20.99
e-book ed.  978-0-593-30905-6    $10.99

In this prequel to Pet (rev. 11/19), teenage Bitter (the mother of that book’s protagonist) agonizes, from the safety of her arts boarding school, over whether her art and survival are morally sufficient answers to the violence and inequalities in her city, while her friends work on the dangerous front lines of protest and community response. When an act of police brutality pushes Bitter from crippling anxiety to rage, she paints—and ­summons—a living angel. It and other angels, ­summoned by other students, dismiss protest in favor of slaughter in their quest to free the city of “­monsters.” In contrast to the secretive violence of Pet, Bitter’s ­confrontations are explosive and overt, and the setting is sharpened with real-world references, including modern protest language. The novel raises painfully complicated questions about responsibility, violence, and vengeance, though readers of Pet will know the answers: two decades on, it’s clear that the angels’ ruthlessness largely (if imperfectly) worked. This installment, accomplished in its use of uneasily surreal language, is at its strongest when depicting the hugely effective angels and Bitter’s own emotional through line as she tries to balance justified fear and desire for safety against moral ­obligation.

From the March/April 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.