Reportless Places | Review of Bill Hayward’s Chasing Dragons: An Uncommon...
What I liked was the call to adventure that is in the author's own answer to the call to adventure.
View ArticleIntoxication of Influence: Review of Samuel Archibald’s Arvida — Mark Sampson
The intoxication of influence, a willingness to let a life of reading speak through you as you try to write about where you come from.
View ArticleTransmute, Disturb: A Review of The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams —...
It might the pithiest of credos for Williams’ fiction. Life is an eccentric privilege…and then you die --- her stories never let you forget...
View ArticleThe Slow Southern Minute: Courting the Dead of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman...
Sometimes, iconoclasts are far more valuable than the creaking icons they destroy. Lee has done well to disillusion her readers—
View ArticleThe Education of Ta-Nehisi Coates: Review of Between the World and Me — Tom...
...struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about his world is meant to be.
View ArticleWorlds Within Words: Review of William H. Gass’s Eyes — Frank Richardson
...the real quality unifying William H. Gass’s work is the composition, composition born from a belief in the beauty of language...
View ArticleRevelation on the Factory Floor: Review of Bohumil Hrabal’s Mr. Kafka and...
...big dreamers, unlikely heroes, melancholy souls.
View ArticleAwaiting the Deluge: A Review of Rochester Knockings by Hubert Haddad —...
Hubert Haddad’s novel about spiritualism satisfies in ways similar to that of a great magic trick...
View ArticleMemo from City Lights: On Leonard Gardner and Fat City — Domenic Stansberry
There is a lyric quality, but it seems to emerge from what is observed, not from the hand of the writer.
View ArticleHave I Come Clean Enough?: Review of Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine by Diane...
...an inarticulate present where something is always amiss...
View ArticleAll the World’s a Stage: Review of Rafael Chirbes’ On the Edge — Joseph...
...harsh, unforgiving, and unforgettable—like the monumental novel that he anchors in this desolate wasteland.
View ArticleA Literary Incendiary Device: Review of Matches by S.D. Chrostowska — Jeff...
...a cynic despairing of humanity’s chances....
View ArticleA Human Situation: Review of The Happy Marriage by Tahar Ben Jelloun — Jason...
The Happy Marriage is corrugated and layered—like the broken and fretful marriage it depicts.
View ArticleWorlds in the Detail: A Review of Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton —...
...a 17th-century word-smith, raging oddball, and wheeling brain.
View ArticleA Strange and Haunting Beauty: Review of What About This, Collected Poems of...
"all of this/ is magic against death."
View ArticleSecond Chances: Review of The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck — Frank Richardson
Light as a dream yet so grounded in the moment.
View ArticleSpare My Wrists : Review of A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo...
Thoughts of a gecko infused with the spirit of Borges in time of war.
View ArticleUnnatural Light: Review of Party Headquarters by Georgi Tenev—Natalia Sarkissian
A disoriented world, bodies shattered or glowing with unnatural light...
View ArticlePassive Rebellion: Review of Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs by Lina...
This book haunts and horrifies and challenges us.
View ArticleI Have Revealed It Here, Just In Case Anybody Ever Cares: Review of Patrick...
The infinite suggestiveness of common things.
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