book review
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Unsettled Memories: First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami
Author and narrator, fiction and memory, never settle comfortably into their proper places.
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Electric Synthesis: Drakkar Noir by Michael Chang
Chang’s style imitates internet culture and the patterns of an anxious mind. But there’s also glamour.
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Both of These Things Are True: Negative Space by Lilly Dancyger
The frame expands. The structure collapses. The pieces are still speaking.
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Hauntings in the Kingdom of Money: Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel
There is an admiration, here, of the transitory soul.
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Word by Word, Brick by Brick: Christine Larusso’s There Will Be No More Daughters
In other words: Larusso does some remarkably heavy lifting in this book.
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A Love That Leaves Scars: With Teeth by Kristen Arnett
Reading Kristen Arnett’s With Teeth is like taking an afternoon drive down the I-4 of my memory.
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Both Trauma and Sin: Elizabeth Miki Brina’s Speak, Okinawa
Speak, Okinawa is masterful at describing the internal dissonance that mixed race children can feel.
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Exorcising Whiteness: Khalisa Rae’s Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat
Rae presents America as seen through Black girls’ eyes, experienced by our bodies.
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Illuminating the Darkness: Madeleine L’Engle’s The Moment of Tenderness
For anyone looking for some truth and tenderness amidst a still-trying time, look no further.
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Hell Is a Young Man: Fraternity by Benjamin Nugent
The brutality of frat culture, Nugent suggests, is a veneer that hardly masks its devotees’ miseries and insecurities.
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Depths of Story: Who’s Your Daddy by Arisa White
The inherited wounds cut so deep one wonders if they can ever be fully healed.
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The Plague within a Plague: Ethel Rohan’s In the Event of Contact
Rohan is masterful at mining these triads for their palpable uneasiness and unavoidable suffering.