Reviews
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Jonah Man, by Christopher Narozny
On the surface, Christopher Narozny’s Jonah Man screams masculinity. There’s mystery, of course, and, crime, drugs, and all-too-familiar feminine archetypes. It could easily have been just another well-written book of genre-fiction; what makes it shine is its beguiling world.
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Advice for Lovers by Julian Talamantez Brolaski
“A rose is arrows is eros,” as one poem has it, and who is to argue? Love and lyricism are all the better for their queerness. Brolaski, with a powerfully trans poetic, instructs us on just this fact, cloying power…
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Inside by Alix Ohlin
At some point in Inside, Alix Ohlin’s elegant second novel, you will probably notice, as I did toward the end, that her characters have a lot of sex. I mean a LOT of sex.
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The Walk by Robert Walser
Robert Walser’s legendary novella Der Spaziergang (The Walk), the first work of his to appear in English and the only one to be translated during his lifetime, is now available in the revised version he published three years after the…
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Black Square by Tadeusz Dąbrowski
To say the least, the speaker in the collection works hard to figure himself out in relation to philosophical, religious, and spiritual matters, and while some American readers may find such a project quaint, naïve, or retro, it holds power…
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The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
Somewhere in an anonymous functionary’s desk drawer or a filing cabinet in a fluorescent-lit office or a cardboard box in a dusty basement sits the Persian-language manuscript of Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel. Whatever the Iranian government does with books that…
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Paradise, Indiana by Bruce Snider
It’s gratifying that Bruce Snider dwells in the past without so much as a hint of nostalgia, that he offers up both the beauty and devastation of small-town Indiana.
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How To Get Into The Twin Palms, by Karolina Waclawiak
If you’re drawn to this book, like I was, because of its cover–crimson daggers plunging through skulls–thinking you’ll get a drug lord tale à la Breaking Bad, turn back. How To Get Into The Twin Palms, the first novel by Karolina…
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Falcons on the Floor, by Justin Sirois
What is a novel about war supposed to do in 2012? Such works have all but lost their ancient claim to cultural significance. War is just another subject now, not the supposed crucible of social meaning it used to be, where destinies…
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I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say by Anthony Madrid
If this collection didn’t have one again questioning the origin and provenance of poetry (other than the intellect or empirical self), the poems would be getting short shrift.
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Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle
Madness, Rack, and Honey is a gift from a rigorous intellect, unflinching critic, and a big old sloppy heart. Ruefle has created a work of poetry from the daunting task of writing about it.
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Living, Thinking, Looking, by Siri Hustvedt
A particular essay in Siri Hustvedt’s new collection Living, Thinking, Looking encapsulates much of what is equally intriguing and frustrating about her as an essayist. Called “Outside the Mirror,” the essay is a cogent reflection on self-consciousness and superficiality in…