Reviews
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A Smidge of Confusion, A Glow of Fear
Vogelsang is sometimes so restless its hard not to wonder how and when he sleeps, and he makes the reader confront the question of whether sleep, or any kind of ease, is a valid way to spend time.
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Georgia Bottoms
In Mark Childress’s latest novel, Georgia Bottoms, his eponymous heroine is a mash-up of Southern women from popular culture, but that is no reason not to read it.
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Poor Little Poughkeepsie
The affection Joshua Harmon has for Poughkeepsie is the kind one might have for an alcoholic uncle or an abusive neighbor who occasionally tells good stories. The only love here is tough, the product of circumstance rather than choice.
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Halal Pork and Other Stories
Filled with a slew of social critiques and riffs on popular Muslim and American iconography, Cihan Kaan’s first collection of short stories, Halal Pork, is decidedly Muslim-American but also conflicted, negotiating the space between assimilation into American society and the…
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The Bee-Loud Glade
Steve Himmer’s The Bee-Loud Glade is a rubber-band, stretching from nature to virtual reality and back.
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Leopardi, to the Moon
A concise and erudite presentation of and meditation on the complex and solitary figure of Leopardi, it is also an exploration of the major themes and forms of the poems in Canti—idylls, elegies, dramatic monologues, and history poems, among others—while…
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And Then Lapsed Ordinary
I found myself intrigued by all of the energy surrounding what people seem to be calling a renewed energy in Heaney’s work.
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The Free World
In David Bezmozgis’s first novel, the Krasnansky’s, a family of Soviet émigrés, wait in Italy for permission to move to North America, the Free World referenced in the book’s title.
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Night Soul and Other Stories
The idiosyncrasy of James McElroy’s prose has been a stumbling block for his readers, but his new collection, Night Soul and Other Stories, feels true to their author, every turn of phrase artistically sincere.
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You Know Butterflies’ Semaphore Graces It
Why We Make Gardens abounds with… lyricism and in doing so may serve as explanation. We make gardens and poems and art to achieve gentle charms of word and life.
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You May Say Fist, You May Say Teeth
The unsentimental and honest display of Levin’s attitudes towards loss – her own losses as well the ways that others grieve their lost loved ones – is both moving and strangely distancing, as if by holding her emotions to the…
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Other People We Married
Emma Straub’s debut collection of stories, Other People We Married, is full of quirky, thoughtful, resonating characters and has earned her comparisons with Lorrie Moore.