Funmi Fetto, style editor for British Vogue, offers her first work of fiction with Hail Mary, an electrifying nine-story collection centering women on the move, some toward freedom, others toward disaster, others caught facing dead ends. Fetto opens with "2 Samuel 6:14," about a pastor's wife who finally plans her escape from heinous abuse; the cleverly chosen verse, "And David danced before the LORD with all his might," provides aspirational inspiration.
Other women are not so lucky, fleeing one bad situation into another, possibly facing entrapment: in the titular "Hail, Mary," a young woman leaves her young son in Nigeria for exhausting failures in London; in "Underneath the Mango Tree," a wife hoping to remedy the couple's childlessness potentially destroys the marriage; in "Trip," a newly orphaned girl is unknowingly sent from Nigeria into servitude in England; in "Housegirl," a girl survives incest only to serve her rapist employer. Fetto thoughtfully, thankfully balances victimization with hard-won self-determination, notably rewarding in "Homecoming," about a new widow who reclaims her ancestral Nigerian food, culture, and country after her white British husband's death.
Perhaps influenced by her notable journalist background, Fetto writes with a pointed directness and clarity. Her fiction deftly highlights ubiquitous challenges to women--particularly physical, psychological, sexual abuse--unembellished, unfettered by judgment: "Escape was futile" signals rape; "you can't eat love" denotes realistic marital expectations; "she threw herself out through the doors" reveals suicide. Despite Fetto's specific geographies here, a character's declaration, "I want to start afresh. On my own," proves an empathic cri de coeur with universal resonance. --Terry Hong