Reviews Archives - Page 13 of 220

Clearing the Bar with Care and Complexity: Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind

The Hurting Kind’s epigraph, a quote from Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik [implores] us to “Sing as if nothing were wrong. / Nothing is wrong.” When we read Limón, we can almost believe that.

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Hometown Humbling: Delia Cai’s Central Places

The shame is cumulative.

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Languages Within A Language: Camilo José Cela’s The Hive

How do you represent, in a different tongue, the languages within the language of the original text?

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Holding On and Letting Go: Rebecca Aronson’s Anchor

Gravity is what tethers us to the earth and to those we love, but it is also what we are constantly trying to escape. Anchor is about both these states—the holding on and the letting go—and the tension between them.

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Artifacts of Adolescence: Curing Season by Kristine Langley Mahler

We lose track of things and people over time. But back then, they felt like everything.

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Finding Freedom in the Absurd: Jesse Ball’s Autoportrait

From Ball’s absurdist perspective, leaning into the world’s inherent purposelessness isn’t about embracing mortality. It’s about embracing complete obliteration.

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Sketch Book Reviews: Beaverland by Leila Phillip

. . . a little beaver named Geronimo

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Another Oracle: Lynn Xu’s Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Light

Almost ten years have passed since Lynn Xu’s debut, the luminous Debts & Lessons, introduced us to her oracle. “Let it not be for what you write, the world /…

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Balancing the Heart and Mind: Ryan Lee Wong’s Which Side Are You On

Which Side Are You On is a novel both of the heart and the mind: one that makes you think and question your perception of the world and your place in it, and feel deeply and fervently about what matters to you.

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What Is a Person?: Lydia Conklin’s Rainbow Rainbow

Safety requires setting up clear boundaries, but a restricted life is lonely and isolating and often impossible to bear.

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The Sense of Words: Reverse Engineer by Kate Colby

. . . language is duplicitous. To be broken is perhaps to be part of a process (or a metaphor for life), where to bend (and survive) also leads to being broken. In this context, the word “broken” in “Reverse Engineer” might well point to a hard-won success.

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The Story and the Truth: Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation

. . . a scathing, satirical campus novel about academia, orientalism, the Western commodification of Asian cultures, and the lengths to which institutions will go to protect their reputations and their darlings.

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