Category: Reviews & Criticism

The Fugue, a novel by Gint Aras, reviewed by Theodore Richards

One of the paradoxes of a writer’s life is that creating a novel is solitary experience that, if it is done with any degree of integrity, cannot avoid the interconnectedness of our world. We are in this together. A novel, like any work of art, is the product of the relationships of our lives. To tell…
Book Review: Amy Long on Bible Adventures, retrogaming nonfiction by Gabe Durham

When I was about eight or nine, I swore to God that I would read my entire Precious Moments Bible. Carrying the book to church on Christmas and Easter had always made me feel like a grownup; I’d press its white-leather cover against my chest the way TV teenagers held their schoolbooks and run my…
Fiction Review: Franklin Schneider Reads Over for Rockwell by Uzodinma Okehi

Put five writers together, and it won’t take them ten minutes to come to a consensus about why contemporary literature is so underwhelming. But read the books they’ve written and you’ll likely find that they’re guilty of every literary offense they just listed. There are many reasons for this—capitalism is one (i.e., the necessity of a marketable…
Fiction Review: Ian Denning Reviews Margaret Malone’s People Like You

The title story of Margaret Malone’s debut collection begins with an unhappy married couple getting invited to a surprise party, getting lost on the way, and arguing in the car. Malone draws the argument out for longer than most writers would—three and a half pages of the couple snapping at each other for missing the…
The Mad Feast, an ecstatic food tour by Matthew Gavin Frank, reviewed by Vivian Wagner

Let me just say at the outset that The Mad Feast is a frenzied, delirious ride of a book. This collection of fifty essays travels around the country, through Matthew Gavin Frank’s mind, and into the nether regions of America’s culinary heritage. It’s an exploration of pleasure and sexuality, food and loss, slavery and cannibalism,…
Poetry Review: Sandra Hunter Reads Antidote for Night by Marsha de la O

Poetry is no easy way to understand why we are here on this planet; . . . A poet achieves the essential on the page, for a moment, and then that moment is gone. —Ilya Kaminsky: A Conversation, with Tatyana Mishel, Cranky Literary Journal As a UK transplant, I’ve lived in California since…
Fiction Review: Zachary Kocanda Reads Softby Ryan Werner

There’s not much to writing rock and roll music. A popular quote says all you need is three chords and the truth. Researching this quote, I learned that it was about country music (from Harlan Howard), but it applies to rock and roll, too. In fact, Lou Reed said one chord was fine, and two…
The Spectators, a new graphic novel by Victor Hussenot, reviewed by Nick Francis Potter

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. 1. Victor Hussenot’s newest graphic novel, The Spectators, is his first published in English, and, well, it isn’t really a graphic novel at all. Or, it is and it isn’t. It is. (A note to my wife: this isn’t another opinion piece on misnomers and the politics…
Book Review: Caleb Nelson on Nate Marshall’s Poetry Collection Wild Hundreds

Nate Marshall’s Wild Hundreds is a story about amnesia and national shame. In these poems, Marshall presents us with a host of difficult subject matter. He shows us high school dropouts and troubled towns with troubled teens. He shows us the deeply embedded systems of control and oppression in our places of leisure and work.…