What We Become
Péter Nádas’s Parallel Stories illustrates the haphazard, psychological violence of a century of ideology, disruption, and the search for the meaning of personal freedom.
Reviews
2612 posts
Fictional Pointillism
Tupelo Hassman’s debut Girlchild is an emotionally rich and complex picture of a smart girl brutalized and circumscribed by circumstances.
Tell Me She Is Happy With Her Life
In this collection, Chaple successfully fuses the personal with the spatial. As a result, an awareness of the way poems, by airing out the rooms of stanzas, can provide at…
A Children’s Waltz
A collaboration between novelist Jessica Anthony and designer Rodrigo Corral yields a novel that makes our hearts move faster than our brains.
Weird Novels by Lady Novelists
In her novel Angel, Elizabeth Taylor turns the exploration of the relationship of the artist to her imagination, her drive, her self-opinion, her ego, on its ear.
Drinking a Glass of Light
The emotional theme of the volume, the nostalgia and death that is announced in the book’s title and reaffirmed in almost every poem to some extent, is what I know…
Wind and Rain Make No Difference
Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom could fit neatly into any number of contemporary-sounding categories: hybrid text, art book, lyric essay, etc. It is a book that relies on interdependence…
Cold-Blooded and Bothered
Ellen Ullman’s throbbing new novel, By Blood, tells the story of an eavesdropping neighbor with a compulsive attention to sound.
The New Gilded Class
Christina Alger’s debut The Darlings follows the Darling family headed by a billionaire financier through the financial crisis. Luckily, these rich people are really screwed up.
A Square Grows Gloomy
Especially for a reader coming to Trakl for the first time, Firmage’s accessible introduction and organization of the poems provide an excellent overview of Trakl’s development as a poet and…
What You Lost Is What Everyone Lost
Often, in contemporary literature, grief becomes clichéd; O’Rourke, however, avoids sappiness or melodrama. Instead, her poetry probes at the actualization of grief, revealing a startling emotional depth.