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In the Saturday Essay, Lisa Borders describes moving to a small community in southern New Jersey at thirteen. It’s the sort of place where everyone knows the difference between “good” and “bad” families. This dynamic reminds Borders of Steven Avery, the embattled subject of the popular Netflix documentary series, Making A Murderer, in turn, Avery reminds […]
...moreFirst, Brandon Hicks brings us an illustrated retrospective of the works of Franklin “Boobs & Butt” Barber. Then, in the Saturday Rumpus Review of Todd Haynes’s movie Carol, Sean Donovan considers how this new film fits into Haynes’s other works that focus on the 1950s, writing, “Until Carol, Haynes’s examination of queer sexuality and fifties culture has been […]
...moreFirst, in the Saturday Essay, Alana Hauser remembers the evil spirit from David Lynch’s eerie TV drama, Twin Peaks. The “parasitic” spirit, named Bob, is “a frightening reflection on the pervasive reality of male violence.” Hauser looks to the shocking ruthlessness of Uma Thurman’s character in Kill Bill for a feminist reply to Bob’s personification of male […]
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Heather Partington reviews Jen Grow’s new collection My Life as a Mermaid.
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Daum’s collection is at its best when it’s being the most transparent and unapologetic.
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Many authors’ stories blend together across a collection; they struggle to convey a unique voice in each piece. Not so with Jen Michalski’s From Here. Though her characters share common experiences—dashed hopes, disappointments, misunderstanding by loved ones—the voice in each story of From Here is fresh and specific. Whether she is writing of a voyeuristic […]
...moreFridays at Enrico’s (Counterpoint) Don’t write about writing. That gets said a lot. But like any absolute about what not to do, it’s only true until someone does it well. Such is the case with Don Carpenter’s Fridays at Enrico’s, his final novel, finished by Jonathan Lethem after Carpenter’s death. The novel follows a small […]
...moreThere are many reasons that an author would want to put a book–an actual physical object–into a reader’s hands, rather than just communicating data. Some books rebuff the notion that fiction is the same when it’s replicated digitally, downloaded, or speed-read. As I write this, the internet is abuzz over the new Spritz app, which […]
...moreWhat sends us to our beds? Desire, sure. Sex. But also sickness. Sleep. Loneliness and healing. Jessica Keener’s Women in Bed is a collection of nine stories about women at all stages of life and wanting.
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What we do to each other in moments breeds a kind of emotional genealogy that can’t be undone. The characters in Kate Milliken’s debut collection, If I’d Known You Were Coming, are bound to the emotional aftermath of their family choices. Her stories are an elegant exploration of each character’s attempts to reconcile his or […]
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