Reviews
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This is More than Poetry.
Grotesquery is the nature of the humor in The Black Automaton.… [Douglas] Kearney leads the reader through laughter at the unchangeable rottenness of life, rather than throwing a tearful pity party.
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Pitt on Parker
The Rumpus assigned “dueling reviews” to the authors of two new short story collections. It didn’t really work out so well.
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Pedal Pusher
A popular cycling blog spawns a humorous book about mental and physical survival on big city streets.
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The Drunk Sonnets
Like most winning drunken acts, The Drunk Sonnets is comprised of extremes. I came away from each poem thinking it was either the best damn thing I’d read in years or that it fell completely flat.
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From Russia with Love
Elif Batuman offers a rogue’s gallery of Russian writers, scholars, and literary characters—the only oddball missing is herself.
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Who’s the Narcissist?
Emily Gould may be the queen of oversharing—but you’re the one reading this review of her book.
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The Black Minutes
A crime novel set in a fictional Mexican city delves into the unsolved murders of two decades.
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A Rich, Prickly Sense of Expansion
In A Meteorologist in the Promised Land, Becka Mara McKay reminds us that every language is a unique translation of a combination of desire and thought, both of which have complicated, individual histories.
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From Old Notebooks
“As the writer wrestles with his book and his family, we reexamine our thoughts about the writer. It’s a performance in which writer and reader have equal billing.”
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Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving
“Amnesia had long streaming hair bleached to a dazzling white and was always clad in black. Flying through the air she seemed like a Valkyrie warrior plunging down from Valhalla.”
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I Know Why the Caged Bear Sings
A collection of stories from a Romanian-American writer, nominated for a Northern California Book Award, juxtaposes stories from the old country and the new.