Reviews
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Diary of a Young Survivor
A playwright’s first novel takes on adolescence and grief in a post-9/11 world
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If Only Nothing Would Grow
It isn’t lyrical, it isn’t fun, it isn’t a spectacle, it doesn’t beg for your attention—Nog honestly considers the absurdity and sadness of everyday life.
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A Disobedient Girl
A first novel about a Sri Lankan servant girl brings to life a vivid world of class differences, and restores dignity to characters who are often shoved to the sidelines.
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An Inside Passage
Kurt Caswell’s award-winning essays channel Phillip Lopate and David Foster Wallace, while exploring the plight of a “mountain man” stuck in a paved-over world.
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A Vestige Stirred By Light
The Next Settlement has a rock-solid American quality that compares favorably to William Carlos Williams. Think Plymouth and ocean waves constantly changing, hypnotic in part because of the mysteries beneath.
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Crown of Sonnets
An anthology of stories from the new Russia shows the continuity between contemporary writers and their canonical predecessors
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A History of Violence
In After the Fire a Small Still Voice, love is a difficult, vulnerable salvation—its troubled characters aren’t sure it’s worth the risk.
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Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys
“There’s something unique about being a member of the sex worker club, an instant camaraderie that bonds one to people who would otherwise be strangers, and this chemistry is something of which Sterry can’t get enough.”
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How to Leave Hialeah
“Crucet is endowed with the double vision that helped Richard Wright and Salman Rushdie describe the lives of marginalized people with poignancy, humor, and rich music.”
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Sex and the Witty
There’s Something Wrong with Sven combines imaginative leaps worthy of Calvino and Vonnegut with tragicomic irreverence of the George Saunders variety.
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On the Couch
The protagonist of this novel about addiction, therapy, and recovery, confronts many of the same issues as its author.
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Take Dead Aim
Aim Straight at the Fountain and Press Vaporize is ambitious and clever. By turns entertaining, fascinating, and charming, it is also monotonous with its adolescent charm and fluorescent insistence.