Sam, their dog, “fell like a log” when Priscilla, one of the two central protagonists and narrators of the Women’s Prize for Fiction-shortlisted novel, Dominion, “released the clasp on his leash”. Noticing her pastor husband “staring at us from his study”, the heinousness of the crime dawns on her. He has brutally killed the dog.

Mississippi-born author Addie E. Citchens then draws readers into Priscilla’s mind: “I knew and expected certain things from him, for he was nothing but a man, but that kind of cruelty I didn’t know how to address or reconcile. Now I only went into his bedroom to change his sheets.” The knowledge at play here is two-fold: of the nature of men, and of the nature of a husband. But there’s also a liminal submission here: Priscilla’s place in the larger scheme of things. What does one do with knowledge that cannot be acted upon, when one’s circumstances afford no real agency?

In this stellar debut, Citchens not only manages to demonstrate this effect, but also drives a searing narrative of parenthood, sisterhood, and the intersectionality of identity, staging the scenes that unfold around the Seven Seals M.B. Church, in the fictional town of Dominion, Mississippi, where Priscilla’s husband, Rev. Sabre Winfrey, Jr., presides as pastor.

Together, they have five sons — twins, Trey and Moshe, Mack, Ivy and Emanuel. The last, the youngest, is also called Manny or Wonderboy. He’s desired by everyone, and holds a special place in his mother’s heart, who, despite her beauty, is glanced at awkwardly, for she has a “small frame and bad hip”. She is grateful that Manny “looked like the best of both of them”. However, by her own admission, wouldn’t Manny then carry some of his father’s cruelty too?

The ‘bright’ man

Manny’s talents are many, but there’s also a halo around him, of his unpredictability in the face of events. Readers hardened by their life experiences would know instinctively that beneath this beauty there’s an evil at play, which materialises when they meet the other narrator — a young, orphaned girl, Diamond, who has known hunger like none of the Winfreys. But, the hunger for love is of a different kind. It misinforms your judgment like nothing else. Though she’s adopted by a widow, Maggie, and is in touch with her siblings, there’s a sadness she’s consumed by. Something, perhaps, her mother gifted her: “a lifetime of isolation, of wanting so bad that it hurts”.

What happens when a prodigious young man is in a relationship with a young girl who can be easily ostracised, or is even believed to bring ill luck to the bright boy? Wasn’t it Judge Edward Cowart who referred to the serial killer Ted Bundy as a “bright young man”? Society often seems more concerned with the waste of a talented man than with the lives he destroys in the process. And isn’t it the mother who is ultimately blamed for raising such a son?

In a man’s world, it is still the man who is labelled “bright”, no matter how much darkness he leaves in his wake.

Defining identity

Even though rock solid, if that were the arc of the story, it would still feel predictable — requiring the author’s command over language to carry it forward. Demonstrating her craft, Citchens complicates this trajectory instead, offering sexuality as a force to be reckoned with. She binds it with shame — an overwhelming emotion that can consume if left unprocessed, or compel one towards extraordinary, often irredeemable, acts.

Shifting between the perspectives of Priscilla and Diamond as they witness the turbulent aftermath of Manny’s actions within a structure shaped by Sabre’s “morning messages” at the church, and using deftly placed third-person narrative interruptions, Dominion emerges as an assured debut. It restores faith in the power of language — and in the act of owning one’s story — suggesting that we are not defined solely by what has happened to us, but by what we choose to carry forward.

The reviewer is a Delhi-based queer writer and culture critic.

Dominion

Addie E. Citchens

Europa Editions

₹1,153 (ebook)