Category: Reviews & Criticism

Dryland, a novel by Sara Jaffe, reviewed by Genevieve Hudson

Think back to your early teenage years. What do you remember? Perhaps specific moments come flooding back. Maybe it’s more of a general feeling tinged in dusky sepia. It is a time when we are figuring out how to define ourselves, when we are learning what we want to say no to and when we…
The Secret Games of Words, stories by Karen Stefano, reviewed by Nick Sweeney

Writers should excel to be more than simple transcribers of thought and action; they should be the stethoscope of every letter and every word, taking the pulse as it quickens and stops. Karen Stefano, author of The Secret Games of Words, is one of those writers, and the collection’s theme is a type of wordplay on steroids—not…
Nick Sweeney on With Animal, a collaborative short story collection by Carol Guess & Kelly Magee

Fiction shows the humanity of our own nature. It’s a reflection of what is and what could be. With Animal, cowritten by Carol Guess & Kelly Magee, is one of those collections of fictions. It squirms, it screams, it claws at you. With every story, the reader is introduced to animals, to mothers, to the…
Baldur’s Gate II, a nonfiction book by Matt Bell, reviewed by Ryan Werner

Once a year, I drive an hour and a half to get pictures with some old wrestlers in Waterloo, Iowa. Danny Hodge, a retired boxer and wrestler with double tendons in his wrists that allow him to pop apples and break pliers, is always there. Jim Ross is there, too. Aside from his time in…
Juventud, a novel by Vanessa Blakeslee, reviewed by Leland Cheuk

Juventud is Spanish for “youth,” which is what is at stake for Mercedes Martinez, the fifteen-year-old in Vanessa Blakelee’s earnest and evocative first novel. Juventud is set mostly on a hacienda in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, where camping near the gates are desplazados (rural, indigenous people forced to abandon their homes due to the decades-long…
Blackout, nonfiction by Sarah Hepola, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Blackout follows Sarah Hepola’s life as a drinker, starting with sips in grade school and progressing through her first drunk in junior high, which was followed by many, many more in high school, college, and beyond. This well-written and engaging memoir will appeal to all readers of nonfiction, particularly those interested in addiction narratives, and…
Fiction Review: Rebekah Bergman on No Moon by Julie Reverb

We begin No Moon with a paragraph-long chapter. There is no end punctuation. “I will say this only twice,” we are told in the opening line. And in fact, it is already the second time we’ve read this: that line is also the chapter’s title. And so, Reverb’s spiraling, lyric prose takes off, facing us backward as…
“Tell Us What Turn Your Life Took”: Linda Michel-Cassidy on The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

The Story of the Lost Child is the fourth and final installation in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novel series. The first book, My Brilliant Friend, begins with the school-aged narrator, Elena, finding herself drawn to the academic life despite her family’s limited resources and lack of encouragement. This segment includes the history the Naples neighborhood where…
Fiction Review: Ryan Werner Reads True False by Miles Klee

Whereas some writers try out different voices, Miles Klee tries out different worlds. In True False, ghosts come alive, men walk on walls, and love is just a project for the Department of Methods, but the voice is persistent, sometimes to a fault: an intelligent destruction and self-aware deductivity of and with language, all at…