Vincent Anioke’s story collection Perfect Little Angels is unsettling, empathetically told, and compelling.
Kim Magowan wrote of the book:
“Vincent Anioke’s brilliant, harrowing short story collection Perfect Little Angels is populated by characters who are struggling, for the sake of those who in equal measure love them and judge them, to become someone else: someone with sanctioned desires. In these brutal, sad, funny stories, Anioke considers what culture demands from men and women and how to survive these demands intact.”
In his own words, here is Vincent Anioke’s Book Notes music playlist for his story collection Perfect Little Angels:
A woman witnesses the aftermath of a suicide pact. A cleaver-wielding teen commits armed robbery late at night. A ghost delights her grieving partner. In every story of Perfect Little Angels, we meet our protagonists on life-changing days. Moments that the brain’s archives cannot expunge. Intuitively, we understand the link between memory and music. Sasha Sloan’s “Runaway” played on a relentless loop during my first month in Canada, and it still conjures feelings of adventure, uncertainty, and solitude. Lana del Rey’s “Gods and Monsters” soundtracked a dimly lit dance in my MIT dorm room, hands around a soul I was sure I’d marry. It is, therefore, only natural that I present the 14 characters of my debut collection–in different order–with these 14 tracks. Songs that can mirror or provide refuge from their eventful worlds.
“The Songs of Perfect Little Angels” playlist is available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, and YouTube.
“Fly Away” by Lenny Kravitz
Chibuike, it is important that I name you. Know the sound of yourself above your father’s screech of coward, his palm aimed downward. Memorize Kravitz’s longing: I wish I could fly into the sky, so very high, just like a dragonfly. And when you fold your body beneath your blanket, wishing you were as compact as a beetle, remember that the world stretches far outside your home and that the skies never run out. From the height of clouds, your father’s words are smaller and less majestic than a dragonfly.
“Wetin We Gain” by Victor AD
Yes, another bank closes its doors. Another smirk betrays the analyst as your business pitch rattles to its end. Another night passes with her, your wildest daydreams offered as present reality. Her eyes kindle with belief. Her lips draw close. At night, when you pray for forgiveness and then for more, notice the convergence of your yearning with Victor’s vulnerable chorus: “Lord, you know wetin me and you don talk, make e manifest oh Baba.”
“Hard Times” by Ethel Cain
I didn’t think of you when I first heard this song until the cyclic bridge, the repeated devastation: I’m tired of you, still tied to me, too tired to move, too tired to leave, I’m tired of you, still tied to me. I see at once the damage of ghosts. These words, your story. Her fists, your wounds. I see how you try, try, try to move your definition past your trauma. All the progress that turns back to failure. All the loved ones you chase away. I see your self-loathing. If only awareness equaled transformation. I wish I could help. I can only offer you Ethel Cain.
“Cranes in the Sky” by Solange
At first, you might think this is for the lyrics. After all, you and your dear lover could strain for penance amid the healing attempts that Solange details. But consider all the times you and him have reached, never quite grasping. Think of your weary bones. You have no bed–yet, this must be temporary–so lie on the carpet, your naked skin atop his, and focus only on the orchestral harmony. Strings and bass and drums. In her sparse, calming soundscape, let go of everything but breathing.
“Die Hard” by Kendrick Lamar
Look, man, you’re so woven into the fabric of familial expectations that you can’t stray even musically. Your Spotify playlists are all Igbo gospel lullabies like Akanchawa and Ibu Chim. Today, you will let the voices of the dead and dying shut up for a second. What do you think Kendrick means when he asks, “Can I trust you? Don’t judge me.” Do you see that love and fear can co-exist, or that in your case, they must? Play this song on that man’s bedroom speaker. And insist on the knowing, even when fear biles the taste of his lips on yours.
“River” by Leon Bridges
Mama’s dead. You see her everywhere. You remember the thatched-roof bar where she gave you palm wine for the first time, even though you were way too young. You’re always way too young to lose your Mama. You close your eyes and wonder if this is all she sees, this dark nothing, forever, or if a part of her remains, privy to your endless reminiscing. Embrace the pull of memory and follow Bridges down the river of time.
“Surulere” by Demmie Vee
I’ll tell you something about home you don’t want to hear. It’s more than the room you share with your big sister. More than the smell of her plantain wafting from the kitchen. Home is your city markets, your sideroads, your barbers and hairdressers. There’s terror in charting new ground but listen to Demmie Vee’s guarantee: Motor no go jam you, Karashika no go see you. And step outside.
“mary magdalene” by FKA Twigs
This violation–of your body, your trust, your love–will not go away anytime soon. You may always wonder if that man stares from across the street because he is absentminded or because he’s seen the shame of you in that clip. Your boiling-temp showers will steam the bathroom mirror, saving you from your reflection–but still, strangers’ words roar, led by that first text: oink oink, fat pig. FKA speaks of your sacred geometry. She tells you the shame was never rooted in your desire, that wanting is the most human of things. I don’t know if you’ll believe her. Still. Here she is.
“Time in a Tree” by Raleigh Ritchie
Over the gentlest piano, his voice distorted, Raleigh pleads for time in a tree. Like you could twist your arms and legs around the mystical bark, shimmy past the leaves, and perch yourself on a branch where the clocks don’t tick. Where she still moves, your mistakes forgotten, your neglect a momentary madness. Maybe you could stay up there with her even after the song ends, you two lingering past the fading note of just be what you’ll be.
“Holy Ghost Fire” by Resonance
Our mind does this bizarre, almost funny, thing amid chaos. I remember boarding school, all of us about to be belt-whipped for not revealing the identity of a mischief-maker. My knees trembled. My heart moved in erratic beats. And I wondered, randomly, what it’d be like to be Clark Kent’s sidekick. This song is not a revelation. You know all the words to Holy Ghost Fire. It probably started playing in your head when your son uttered the words that unraveled you. Despite your grief, you imagined your feet tap-dancing to the kinetic production and thought: what silly brains we have. Remember how this song filled the sonic world of his childhood? Play it again to conjure those memories of old. To remember: he’s still your son.
“Let It Burn” by Red
They told you your questions would earn you a billion years in hell. Sometimes, you think of that biblical passage where God hurricane-spawned in front of Job, His chest puffed, thundering accusations about audacity. This song gives voice to that fire in you: these dreams like ashes float away; Your voice I never heard, only silence. Find catharsis in Red’s screaming chorus about a world in peril: How long will You let it burn? How long?
“Good Times” by Asa
The beer bottles clinked for the first time in your new buddy’s living room, and the sound made you think of a song that maybe did not yet exist. A horror movie played on the screen, but its brooding synths didn’t inspire dread, only a sense of being home. Store the beauty of good times in the verses of this soft-hug tune. Save it for the rainy days.
“A Song for You” by Donny Hathaway
Kelechi, I want to tell you what is happening on the other side. I want to tell you about betrayal, and impending heartache, and the danger to your life. Did he really care for you, and maybe something beyond him twisted a good thing? How many times could you and he watch your kin murdered on the news, the journalist branding horror as justice, and still cling to your sanity? I want to ask the hard questions, but you’re not on Earth right now. You are in that place where love sits feather-light in one’s ribcage, and it is so rare and so wondrous that I dare not intrude. As the bus takes you home, marinate in the feeling of endless possibility. Let Donny do his magic. Let his exalted voice and the repeated softness of We were alone pull you deep. We were alone. We. What a beautiful word.
“Love and Hate” by Michael Kiwanuka
That’s what it all comes down to in the end, isn’t it? These entwined and elemental forces, which show themselves in your shared history. Six years. Sixty of you. An army. Fighting for yourselves and each other. In seven minutes, that door will barge open. Two-legged apocalypse will arrive in a white razor-creased dress shirt and dark khaki pants. That’s enough time to follow Kiwanuka down his tunnel to Classic Soul paradise. To draw strength from his refrain against all the ugliness that threatens to crush you. You can’t take me down, he states, plain as day. You can’t break me down.
Vincent Anioke is a writer and software engineer born and raised in Nigeria. His short stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Rumpus, The Masters Review, and Passages North, among others. He won the 2021 Austin Clarke Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Perfect Little Angels is his first book.