Soul of a Whore and Purvis by Denis Johnson
As a writer, Denis Johnson has demonstrated a remarkable ability to polarize. On the one hand he has impressed some of the most prestigious awards committees in the United States.…
Reviews
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Watchword by Pura López Colomé
There is spiritual alchemy at work here, making one wish this piece, and many others, could be chanted by choruses taking turns, in both languages, with an audience not responding audibly between poems.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
Anyone who aspires to write will find the story of Ben Fountain—and the story of how his first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, came to be —both inspiring and heart-rending. Fountain began writing fiction at…
Sound by T.M. Wolf
Novelists rarely engage in typographic adventures. There are exceptions, some of impressive vintage. Laurence Sterne depicts death with a black page in Tristram Shandy. Late-twentieth-century Scottish writer Alasdair Gray (also…
Sinead O’Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds by Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton
It’s 1990. I’ve shut the door to my bedroom, like any self-respecting teenage girl, to listen to my new CD—the one I ordered for a penny from one of those…
Love, InshAllah, edited by Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi
Love, InshAllah, a new collection of essays about romance, love, and sex by Muslim American women, proves that love and faith can live in the same house.
The Silhouettes, by Lily Ladewig
I’m fat. No matter where it stations itself then—against the sunset, unto the dawn, in the most awake and aware of lights at the gas station or drive-thru—my silhouette is…
No Time Like the Present by Nadine Gordimer
Nina Schuyler reviews No Time Like the Present by Nadine Gordimer.
Farther Away, by Jonathan Franzen
Bibliophysicists now speculate that no less than three parallel versions of Jonathan Franzen can coexist at any given moment, and the variant, some say, could be much higher. This assortment…
Enigma and Light, by David Mutschleener
Every once in a while, when I’m reading something, sorting through the words in a half-daze, my brain will just click. I’ll get it. I’ll take on an understanding of…
The Last Repatriate by Mathew Salesses
There’s an inherent need to stitch together a war veteran’s memory because narratives made of memories are otherwise fragmented. This is the tragedy of a war story—that the wholeness will…
Love, An Index, by Rebecca Lindenberg
Love, An Index tells a beautiful and heartbreaking story, and at the heart of it is some of the most original and interesting poetry that I’ve come across in a…