Devil is Fine is a slightly crazy story but one that does an impressive job of exploring the relationship between Black men and their sons. The narrator, a biracial author, serves as both the son and the father in the story. The events take place in the aftermath of his son’s death, and he spends much of the book talking to his son as he attempts to reconcile his parenting and the events unfolding around him. I don’t envy the balance of raising a child with the awareness of the unfairness the world will treat them with, especially when you’d rather treat them as the most precious thing in the world to you. The narrator experiences this with his own father, and then becomes the father imparting the same lessons to his son. Their relationship not on the best of terms when Malcolm dies leaves the narrator bereft and struggling to cope. Then an inheritance left to his son by his white grandfather creates a whole new problem he was never expecting to deal with. And I haven’t mentioned the book he’s written that neither the university he works for or the publishing world is thrilled with. Amongst all the stressors in his life he begins mixing his anti-anxiety medication and alcohol, and that mixed with a jellyfish sting takes him and the reader through some pretty trippy moments. It’s at some of these moments that the book got a little weird for me, but I enjoyed the overall messages about relationships, taking a stand for your beliefs, and the struggle to find yourself.