I've never read a book that takes this form. The short stories stand alone but also work together like a Rubik's cube that is only finally solved at its last gasp. In this way it is simultaneously both a novel and a short-story collection. Super interesting, especially in the ways, directions, even, that they connect. Up, down, left, right, back, forward. This book is three-dimensional. Its best stories, 'The Book of the Dead', 'Seven', 'Water Child', 'The Book of Miracles', 'Night Talkers', 'Monkey Tails', and 'The Dew Breaker' are powerful artistic representations of Danticat's peculiar and unique vein into a transnational emotional distance, set between Haiti and Haitian immigrant communities in New York City. A lot is said thankfully, and always implicitly, about the human lives at the center of contemporary immigration politics. 'The Book of the Dead' is maybe the bravest piece I've ever read, 'Seven' is dreamy, 'Water Child' is perfect, 'The Book of Miracles' is truly necessary, 'Night Talkers' and 'Monkey Tails' are laden with great imagery, and the titular story recalls Graham Greene in more ways than one while tying up the entire collective thread of the book and also producing some cool, dope, sick lines like "He came to kill the preacher." and "He'd dreamed his own death so many times that he was no longer afraid of it." The prose is sometimes stunning. The book's sole weakness is its tedious tendency to dumb things down on a textual level for the reader, over-explaining, in other words. But a part of me recognizes that it's neither a mistake or a failing, it is simply a stylistic choice not exactly to my taste.