One Can Be Alive Again: Madeleine Cravens’s Pleasure Principle
Cravens’s reliance on and loyalty to the image become a propulsive, vibrating force—this is a poetics of presence, of that which is tangible....
Reviews
2620 posts
“Why Are You Still Resisting?”: On M.M. Olivas’s Sundown in San Ojuela
Olivas’s novel is a gross-as-hell ghost story and a razor-sharp vision of the present moment, a multi-narrator rollercoaster you’ll binge like your favorite television show.
Getting the Last Laugh: Alexei Navalny’s Patriot
Navalny’s tragicomic memoir, which one might also categorize as his last call to action, accomplishes the feat of keeping the reader so ensconced that they forget the person capturing every ounce of their attention, intellect, and sympathy is no longer alive.
Moving the Dialogue Forward: Jerald Walker’s Magically Black and Other Essays
Idiosyncratic and smart, MAGICALLY BLACK moves the dialog forward.
Life with a Rabbit in the Shadow of Death: A Review of Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow
Though the pandemic may now feel relatively distant, its reminder of how quickly catastrophe can become an everyday fact of life persists.
Sketch Book Reviews: What An Owl Knows
When things in the world feel particularly scary of hopeless, I find it very difficult to read books about humans.
Preparing for Flight: Yaccaira Salvatierra’s Sons of Salt
Salvatierra’s poems embody the spirit of reclamation, reminding us to ask the wind and water to carry us, to remember our potential for flight.
“ew, don’t use my sound ever again”: On Tyranny and Poupeh Missaghi’s Sound Museum
Power is the end in itself, not a means to justice.
Giving New Life to Indian Literature: Aruni Kashyap’s The Way You Want to Be Loved
Kashyap’s stories, told through the accounts of the Assamese student, writer, researcher, and villager, made me see Assam on its own terms, and the rest of the world through the eyes of Assam.
A Silver Bowl of Stars: Blas Falconer’s Rara Avis
Whether “It’s a [family] story we don’t like / to tell” or the shifting of roles and a meditation on death “In the book we are reading together,” wisdom closes its hand over sentiment.
Danger Down Under: Fiona McFarlane’s Highway Thirteen
According to a website that calculates such things, the furthest city on the globe from my hometown in New York is Perth. Perth—I’ve heard of Perth.
On Living Dangerously: Lyta Gold’s Dangerous Fictions
We are once again living through an age when this fight over the purpose of storytelling, whose stories deserve to be heard, and how freely ideas should circulate is heated.