Reviews
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Aerogrammes by Tania James
Tania James follows her well-received debut novel, 2009’s Atlas of Unknowns, with Aerogrammes, a collection of nine short stories which delve into topics as variant as professional wrestling, chimpanzee adoption, and graphology (the study of handwriting). James’s stories are populated…
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Almost Never, by Daniel Sada
Sex is the first word and ironic driving force of Daniel Sada’s Almost Never. It is the activity the agronomist Demetrio Sordo decides upon to break up the monotony of nightly strolls, cups of coffee, and games of dominos. The only…
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Coming to That by Dorothea Tanning
Dorothea Tanning’s Coming to That is a book full of imagination, creativity, and intellect.
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Between the Crackups, by Rebecca Lehmann
Rebecca Lehmann’s collection, Between the Crackups, is a glittering, furious book. Many of its poems inhabit a childhood world full of violence and anger. Others showcase adult voices that range in tone; they are frustrated, sorrowful, sometimes funny, sometimes contemplative.…
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Ninety Days: A Memoir of Recovery by Bill Clegg
There is a moment in Junky in which a psychiatrist asks William Burroughs’ narrator why he needs narcotics. His answer is to get out of bed in the morning, to function – “I need it to stay alive.” Later, managing…
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Voices of the Rainbow: Contemporary Poetry by Native Americans
Visiting the Taos Pueblo (“an ancient community continuously inhabited for 100 years”) on San Geronimo Day, I was frightened by the Sacred Clowns (Koshares). The list of rules for visitors explained that these fit young men roving about in traditional…
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Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung
In Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country, Janie, the eldest daughter of a Korean immigrant family and a graduate student in mathematics, has always carried the responsibility of appeasing and protecting her little sister Hannah, and has always felt she had to…
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Absolution by Patrick Flanery
Patrick Flanery is not South African, and neither is his debut novel, Absolution. This is not to say that Flanery does not know South Africa or its politics, history, landscape, or culture, all of which pervade the book. Rather, this…
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The Poems of Jesus Christ, by Willis Barnstone
Born in 1927, Willis Barnstone is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Indiana University and an admired translator . His rendering of The Poems of St John of the Cross is rightly revered by believers, non believers, scholars and…
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Girl In Cap and Gown by Harriet Levin
Filmgoers this year who saw the documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3-D (or not) entered the prehistoric Chauvet caves of Southern France in a stunning modern way. The labor to return to the stone womb felt transformative but…
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Zona, by Geoff Dyer
To appreciate Zona, Geoff Dyer’s twelfth book, you’ll need to watch the Andrei Tarkovsky film, Stalker, among the most treasured and troubling movies in the history of cinema. If you’ve never seen it, you’ll need to take your time with…
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Gaze by Christopher Howell
In the opening poem of Christopher Howell’s Gaze, “Home Stretch,” he concludes with, “Receive me. Here are my silver / wings, in accordance with custom. Inside of them / leaves have been falling all these years.” And as readers, we…