Quantcast

reviews

Ghana Must Go

“Ghana Must Go,” by Taiye Selasi

Reviewed By

Setting much of the plot in Ghana Must Go—Taiye Selasi’s engaging first novel about two African immigrants and their children—in Boston was an clever choice: A hilly colony established by English immigrants fleeing religious restrictions, now teeming with people from all over the world who go to the universities, drive cabs, open restaurants (or serve in them), build grassroots organizations, and work, clean or are treated at the hospitals; buy the homes, pay the taxes and gripe about the T; and, in quiet moments, agonize about their fears and desires.

...more

Is That You, John Wayne?

“Is That You, John Wayne?” by Scott Garson

Reviewed By

Following in the steps of such modern day masters of this intricate form, including Lydia Davis and Kim Chinquee, Scott Garson has embraced it, bringing his own brand of American disharmony often seen in those forbears. The majority of stories in his second collection Is That You, John Wayne? run from a page long to three and they are the crux of this collection bent on exploring the sadness of life, the missed or missing opportunities, and the stasis our collective cultures seemed to have emotionally entered while we fly and speed about with technology that probably has not made us treat each other any better.

...more

Body Geographic

“Body Geographic,” by Barrie Jean Borich

Reviewed By

In Body Geographic, Barrie Jean Borich charts the route by which she came to be located in middle age, in the Midwest, and in long-term love with Linnea, a spouse who occupies the middle space of gender. Through jazz, photography, travel, sex, and lineage—including several generations of coffee pots—Borich tells of her individual journey towards full, adult consciousness, towards certitude of self and place.

...more

Possibility: Essays Against Despair

“Possibility: Essays Against Despair,” by Patricia Vigderman

Reviewed By

I like Patricia Vigderman because she likes jickjacking. She describes in “A Writer’s Harvest”, an earlier piece in Possibility: Essays Against Despair, how the sight of that slangy word, in two distinct (but linked) stories—one by Mary Karr, the other by David Foster Wallace—motivate her toward personal tangents and pleasures.

...more

An Elegy for Mathematics

“An Elegy for Mathematics,” by Anne Valente

Reviewed By

An Elegy for Mathematics, Anne Valente’s first full-length release, is a wonderful little book. Checking in at fewer than fifty pages, it’s a quick but deeply layered and poignant collection of material, most of which was previously published online. (She has a forthcoming story collection coming out from Dzanc Books.)

The collection is comprised of thirteen stories, mostly only a few pages in length.

...more

Fire and Forget

“Fire and Forget,” by Roy Scranton, Matt Gallagher, Colum McCann, and others

Reviewed By

“It is the job of literature to confront the terrible truths of what war has done and continues to do to us,” novelist Colum McCann writes in the foreword for Matt Gallagher and Roy Scranton’s new collection of wartime short stories, Fire and Forget.  “It is also the job of literature to make sense of whatever small beauty we can rescue from the maelstrom,” he continues.

...more