No Child of Mine

A family curse spanning multiple generations turns a young wife’s difficult pregnancy into a gothic nightmare in Giraldes’s underplotted debut thriller spun from two alternating narrative threads. In one, Essie, a law student in her final year of studies, and her architect husband, Sanjay, have just moved into their first house when Essie discovers that she is unexpectedly pregnant. In the other, set in an unspecified (but presumably 19th-century) past, the newly married Isabel schemes to save her lover, Ana, and Ana’s newborn daughter, Maria, from the clutches of Ana’s abusive husband. Readers will quickly intuit that the family “curse” which Essie’s mother and grandmother have warned her about—that women in their family give birth only to female children, and then lose their husbands within the year that follows—is the consequence of unholy negotiations that Isabel, their forebear, made to rescue Ana. Though the inevitable convergence of the two story lines keeps the pages turning, Giraldes’s frustratingly circumspect treatment of the shadowy supernatural forces behind the curse offers little insight into their nature and motives. As a result, the resolution feels hasty and improbable. Horror fans will be underwhelmed. Agent: Claire Friedman, InkWell Management. (Sept.)