December 2, 2016
On Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Small Backs of Children
New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2016. 256 pages. $24.99. While it received a great deal of attention for its inventive depictions of sexual expression, the real power of Lidia Yuknavitch’s […]
December 2, 2016
“You Carved the World Because You Craved the World”: On Banana Palace by Dana Levin and Blackacre by Monica Youn
Banana Palace. Dana Levin. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon, 2016. 96 pages. $17.00. Blackacre. Monica Youn. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf, 2016. 88 pages. $16.00. A poet’s job, in as much as […]
November 25, 2016
“Only a Different Life”: On Sara Majka’s Cities I’ve Never Lived In
Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf, 2016. 192 pages. $16.00. The stories in Sara Majka’s debut collection Cities I’ve Never Lived In are linked by a common narrator named Anna who recollects the […]
November 25, 2016
On Street of Thieves by Mathias Énard
Translated by Charlotte Mandell. Rochester, NY: Open Letter, 2014. 265 pages. $15.95. Mathias Énard’s Street of Thieves reads like a gray, thundercloud-filled afternoon with a charged, energized, and pensive dark. […]
November 25, 2016
November Micro-Reviews
Louise Bernice Halfe. Burning in this Midnight Dream. Coteau Books, 2016. 81 pages. $16.95. The Ojibwe word weweni implies the need to take care, to do things properly, to be appropriate. When […]
November 25, 2016
November 2016 Micro-Reviews
Louise Bernice Halfe. Burning in this Midnight Dream. Coteau Books, 2016. 81 pages. $16.95. The Ojibwe word weweni implies the need to take care, to do things properly, to be appropriate. When […]
November 18, 2016
On Seamus Heaney’s Aeneid Book VI
New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. 112 pages. $23.00. In an opening note, Seamus Heaney writes that his translation of the Aeneid’s sixth book came out of a […]
November 18, 2016
On Alamo Theory by Josh Bell
Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2016. 82 pages. $16.00. On the cover of this small and abnormally square book of poetry, a man in a suit holds a square […]
November 11, 2016
“Like A Planet Forming Its Own Orbit”: Robin McLean’s Reptile House
Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2015. 216 pages. $16.00. Is it fair to begin with a misreading? In the opening pages of “Blue Nevus,” the penultimate story in Robin McLean’s fabulous […]
November 11, 2016
History’s Lover: Second Empire by Richie Hofmann
Farmington, ME: Alice James Books, 2015. 100 pages. $15.95. Richie Hofmann’s debut collection, Second Empire, contains the fierce construction of a life saturated with love. Hofmann’s speaker looks closely at […]
November 4, 2016
The Art of Loneliness: Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City
New York, NY: Picador, 2016. 315 pages. $26.00. There’s a moment late in Olivia Laing’s new book where the author has a flash of realization while watching Spike Jonze’s 2013 […]
November 4, 2016
On Amateurs by Dylan Hicks
Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2016. 288 pages. $16.95. What do you do if you yearn to become a famous author but have relatively little talent for writing? If you’re […]