Category: Reviews & Criticism

“Something That Was Infinite”: Meghan Lamb Reviews The Goners, a novel by Mark Gluth

I’ve always felt a fondness toward the aesthetic of gauzy realism. It seems apt, as far as literary terms go. The term was first used by critics describing the plays of Tennessee Williams, referring to scenes which fog the real with uncanny light. Williams believed that the significance of gauzy realism was in its effect…
Scrapper, a new novel by Matt Bell, reviewed by Sam Slaughter

If they’re not from there, people tend to avoid Detroit these days. Buildings, if not collapsed, are pillaged for any valuables, and the desolate places left are filled with desperate peoples. There is a grim sense of finality in everything that happens there—the people that undertake actions could die or, if they’re lucky, move away.…
“The Uncomfortably Ugly, the Stupidly Human, and the Beauty of the Mundane”: Troy James Weaver Reviews Robert Vaughan’s Addicts & Basements

Robert Vaughan’s Addicts & Basements is a slim volume of flash fiction and poetry coming in at just under one hundred fifty pages. I’m not going to lie, that knowledge alone led me into some kind of garnered skepticism, as usually these types of collections are relegated to the I-have-all-this-shit-lying-around-might-as-well-make-a-book-of-it category. That’s not the case with…
Poetry Review: Brian Alan Ellis on Bipolar Cowboy by Noah Cicero

Noah Cicero had a nervous breakdown. Following an Adderall bender and the unraveling of a cross-continental romance, the angry young man who authored critically acclaimed existentialistic novels like The Human War, Bad Behavior, and The Insurgent, completely and nervously broke down. Then he got himself together. Bipolar Cowboy, this collection of confessional poems and poem-like…
Get in Trouble, stories by Kelly Link, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Kelly Link’s fiction follows the same kind of logic that lets you coast through a dream where your partner is played by your tenth-grade math teacher and you’re wearing roller skates, yet there doesn’t seem anything weird about it. In Link’s stories, mermaids are an invasive species, the job of superhero sidekick includes a lot…
Nonfiction Review: Sam Price on Thrown by Kerry Howley

“Does not every human story open midscene?” The majority of narratives offered to us about athletes are constructed with an absolute disregard for complexity or nuance and are, rather, woven neatly together in ways that simplify and obscure reality. Information is instead dispersed, largely, in the form of amazing yet incoherent SportsCenter clips or articles…
Do Not Rise, poetry by Beth Bachmann, reviewed by Emily Paige Wilson

Beth Bachmann’s poetry is morning light sliced by blinds, fragmented and illuminating. It doesn’t burn when it settles on your skin, but its warmth unnerves. Its brightness momentarily blurs all sight. This warm unnerving, this brightened blurriness draws readers from sleep into a realm of sensation and forces us to pay attention. It awakens us.…
Jillian, a novel by Halle Butler, reviewed by Jack Kaulfus

Just know that when you enter a staring contest with Halle Butler’s first novel Jillian, you will not win. You will need to acknowledge your defeat quietly, then find a quiet place to recoup. Butler’s workplace premise is familiar. Jillian and Megan work in the same gastroenterologist’s office. Megan, a miserable twenty-four-year-old, spends her days…
Trances of the Blast, new poetry by Mary Ruefle, reviewed by Karen Craigo

Remember sex in the early days—how you’d become obsessed with particulars and risk missing the big picture? You’d think overmuch about your body, or your movements and speed, or the noises your body made, but then you realized, unless sex just wasn’t your thing, that you needed to give in to a more organic understanding…