Reviews
-
King of a Hundred Horsemen
As with much French poetry, the idée fixe of King of a Hundred Horsemen concerns the problematics of desire, and several of the passages are so euphonic in the original that quoting from the translation may lessen the overall effect…
-
Straight Outta Nebraska
In Jami Attenberg’s new novel, a woman flees her comfortable life and finds a mixed bag of possibilities in Sin City.
-
The Best of It
Kay Ryan has been compared to Emily Dickinson, and I like to imagine Dickinson and Marianne Moore reading her with sly commiseration. Unlike some poets with recognizable styles, Ryan does not write the same poem again and again, and her…
-
American History X-treme
A former neo-Nazi’s memoir describes a violent life in the white supremacist movement and his transformative experiences in prison.
-
Teenagers from Mars
Peter Bognanni’s first novel mixes punk rock and the wild creativity of Buckminster Fuller into a tender and believable chronicle of teen sorrow.
-
Postcards from the Edge
“Big American Trip addresses our insecurities as artists, lovers, and citizens who lack the ability to understand one another, regardless of which language we speak.”
-
Twenty and Bored and Alive
This voice is neither howl, yowl, nor whisper, but something more like a quiet monotone, slightly ironic and yet also depressed, lonely and, at times, compellingly vulnerable.
-
The Cost of Living
A new volume of stories by Mavis Gallant traces the writer’s development from early stories of bewilderment and disappointment to the sharp, incisive later work of a master.
-
Heart of Glass
Ali Shaw’s novel concerns a modern-day Midas, a cold and inhospitable island, and a young woman whose body is inexorably transforming.
-
Mutations of Meaning
A first novel by playwright Jillian Weise tackles the moral and ethical questions surrounding both medical research and human relationships.
-
The Ancient Book of Hip
The poems in The Ancient Book of Hip create a precise and evocative description of time and place; they celebrate that space, even as they have a witty undercurrent of critique.
-
The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Dreams, vignettes, hypotheticals, and poetry lay out alternate versions of Western literature’s founding epic.