Listen to This
Whether writing about Mozart or Björk, punk rock or opera, Alex Ross urges readers to search for the moments when the familiar becomes strange.
Reviews
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Holding Company
In Holding Company, his third collection of poems, Major Jackson achieves the difficult feat of writing a book that feels simultaneously both intensely personal and yet also archetypally American.
The Cleverest Man in the World
Donald Sturrock’s biography of Roald Dahl bridges the gap between the literary impresario and the troubled man.
This Fantasy Is Most Disturbing
In Brock Clarke’s Exley, a boy tries to reunite with his father, and to sort out the difference between fact and fiction.
The Man Who Guarded the Bomb
Gregory Orfalea’s collection of linked stories demonstrates that conventions are there for a reason—and it’s often harder to follow the rules than to break them.
When I Go Outdoors, Light Splits
The poems in This Noisy Egg are always engaging and hold the reader’s attention, but they do not feel un-tethered or dangerous. Reading them, I had the sensation that there…
Paper-thin People
The winner of this year’s Drue Heinz prize writes flash fiction that bursts with poetic imagery and focuses on lust and the death of beauty.
Body Odor Can Be a Room
In individual poems, small series of interconnected poems, and in the book as object, Mairéad Byrne has made in The Best Of (What’s Left Of) Heaven a map that covers…
There Is No Other
Jonathan Papernick’s short story collection revolves around the trials and tribulations of “an unlucky persecuted tribe.”
Something That Can Never Be Said with Words
The darkness in Jon Fosse’s work is that of human consciousness confronted with mortality. Yet his characters seem to radiate with a luminous urgency.