Apocalypse Yesterday: Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes
The Membranes is a climate novel not because it contends with catastrophe, but because it shows that everydayness has a way of proceeding alongside disaster.
Reviews
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A Dreamscape of Longing: Two Big Differences by Ian Ross Singleton
Zina’s observations of her time in Detroit crystallize both a feeling of otherness and a wry critique of the young American activists who celebrated socialist ideas without fully appreciating the legacy of Soviet rule in Ukraine.
Using Form to Transform: Come Clean by Joshua Nguyen
If I had a dollar for every word I have written about BIPOC representation in entertainment media, I still wouldn’t have enough to pay back my student loans and car loans.
The Everyday Practice of Art:The Loft Generation by Edith Schloss
Her writing is quiet, perhaps even naive. But Schloss is enamored by the minutiae of her subjects, and the exactness and delicacy of her details ripple out like water. Trying to focus on one aspect of the book would be to let the entire thing go.
In Praise of Young Little Luxuries: Rax King’s Tacky
Her enthusiasm . . . leaves you a little raw, thinking about the things in your own adolescence you could have enjoyed more if you hadn’t learned so early the most ironic ways to protect your heart . . .
A Gentle Touch: Annie Hartnett’s Unlikely Animals
What’s special about Hartnett’s chorus of the dead, though, is that they stress the tension between overlapping realities.
How to Watch While Being Watched: Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s Borealis
The experience, rather than linear, is borealian.
Down the Rabbit Hole: Eugene Lim’s Search History
Lim has written before about experimental fiction and the need to slough off such conventions of narrative as plot.
Metaphor by Any Means Necessary: Destiny O. Birdsong’s Negotiations
Metaphor can make life more bearable, meaningful, or simply comprehensible.
A Sinister Kind of Beauty: Joanna Pearson’s Now You Know It All
The narrator then returns to normal life, only to discover that life may never be normal again.
Under the Influence of Jane Wong: A Recipe-Qua-Review of How to Not Be Afraid of Everything
Combine multiple ingredients in a single stanza-bowl.
Bear Witness: What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J. A. Chancy
Remember us, the characters seem to beg of the reader, imagined mirrors of the real lives lost and mourned.