Category: Reviews & Criticism

“Explorers of Realms”: Joe Aguilar on Ryan Habermeyer’s Novel Necronauts

Science fiction and Mormonism were born together. Scholar Gillen D’arcy Wood explains how the same volcanic eruption that sent Mary Shelley indoors to write Frankenstein, thus inventing science fiction, also displaced Joseph Smith from Vermont to New York where he received his First Vision, thus inaugurating a new religion. Like the Mormon pioneers who fled…
Poetry Review: Scott Ferry Reviews Lillian Nećakov’s Poetry Chapbook The World Is Beautiful

If you don’t know Lillian Nećakov she is a humble but stellar poet out of Toronto. It is hard to explain her work because it slips out of convention and time and space and identity all in the space of one line. Even though I count myself blessed to be her friend, I have never…
Fiction Review: Katharine Coldiron Reads Morris Collins’ Sophomore Novel The Tavern at the End of History

Those who choose to enter Morris Collins’ second novel, The Tavern at the End of History, should do so with a focused mind and a strong heart. It’s a philosophically complex, emotionally wrenching experience. Among its rewards are opportunities to think and reckon deeply with the “black hole … at the heart of the century”…
“A World to Come”: Sarah Giragosian Reads Natalya Sukhonos’ Poetry Collection Sunlight Trapped in Stone

“Mount St. Helens in ashes,” writes Natalya Sukhonos in her newest poetry collection Sunlight Trapped in Stone, setting the scene for a dazzling ars poetica: “Enter the ballooning spider / who sends a long silken thread / into the molten core / only to let go.” Here, Sukhonos nods to the iconic American poets of…
Fiction Review: Mia Carroll Reads Zeeva Bukai’s Epistolary Novel The World Between

Zeeva Bukai’s The World Between is a collection of short letters from a woman in an Israeli sanatorium to her husband back in New York. She reflects on the breakdown of their marriage and her early life during the Holocaust. The nameless narrator grew up in Poland until the start of the Second World War,…
Fiction Review: Sayantani Roy Reads Glen Pourciau’s Story Collection Under

Glen Pourciau has a knack for crafting moments where ordinary characters find themselves in strange quandaries. In The Art of Subtext, Charles Baxter tells us that the best stories have characters who “create scenes that in life, in all likelihood, we would avoid.” Pourciau’s characters excel in just that. Simple arguments heat up and turn into…
Poetry Review: J. Michael Wahlgren Reads Eric Weiskott’s Collection Cycle of Dreams

In Cycle of Dreams, Eric Weiskott presents this notion of an individual on a quest. It’s a common notion in literature to be on a quest, whether that quest be spiritual or a journey from one physical place to another. The verse in the book is structured and there’s a playfulness and simplicity to Weiskott’s…
Book Review: Jen Schneider Reads Constantia “Connie” Munda’s Family Court Docunovel Mother’s Day in the Empire State

Constantia “Connie” Munda’s Mother’s Day in the Empire State: Or, an Answer to the Arraignment of Women is a family-court novel that dismisses the comforts of home and of an idealized narrative of motherhood. It sets forth its method early in its prose: this is, Munda writes, a “deposition novel discovered in the Public Records…
Fiction Review: Adam Stutz Reads Arqueles Vela’s Posthumous Collection Señorita Etcetera

“The door of the Café opens onto the most populous avenue, riotous with sun. Nevertheless, upon crossing this threshold hanging as if from the last rung of reality, one seems to enter the subway of dreams, ideations.” So begins this terrific translation by Julianna Neuhouser of Arqueles Vela’s formative work, Señorita Etcetera. This dual language…