Reviews
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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 thus often a distinct inconvenience, something that, like it or…
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No Time Like the Present by Nadine Gordimer
Nina Schuyler reviews No Time Like the Present by Nadine Gordimer.
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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 of Franzens—and how readers interpret them—can make an impartial reading…
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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 text that allows me to better understand the author’s…
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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 never find resolution. Unfortunately for many veterans, these qualities follow…
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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 long time.
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Us by Michael Kimball
A beautiful wrought novel now re-released, Michael Kimball’s Us tells the story of death from three divergent angles.
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The Listeners, By Leni Zumas
Reading Leni Zumas’s debut novel The Listeners puts one in mind of the Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919. Not because the novel is messy—it isn’t—but because it contains the same rare combination of death, absurdity, and beauty, and a tempo…
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Plume, by Kathleen Flenniken
Newly appointed Washington State Poet Laureate, Kathleen Flenniken, recently released a second book called Plume, part of the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series of University of Washington Press. I will admit, as a reviewer I was fascinated by the idea of…
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Vanishing-Line, by Jeffrey Yang
In Vanishing-Line, Jeffrey Yang writes, “But the birches of Yennecott/ recall his word-spirits.” Rather than using lines or stanzas as the basic unit of expression in this collection, Yang writes with something more fluid, more abstract, at a different level…
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Compendium, by Kristina Marie Darling
As its title suggests, Compendium, poet Kristina Marie Darling’s second book of poetry, is a short collection of poems compiling an incomplete history. Calling the book experimental, fails to tell the whole story. For unlike some experimental poetry, that shirks…
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The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov, by Paul Russell
Sibling rivalry takes many forms. Whether it’s Bart and Lisa Simpson choking each other in front of the television or Cain concussing his brother Abel the outcome is usually the same– someone always wins. There’s always a favorite, a golden…