Category: Reviews & Criticism

Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow, an essay collection by Andy Sturdevanton, reviewed by Nichole L. Reber

Books about place have an almost guaranteed audience of locals who already live in that place and travelers, who may have or may eventually travel to the locale of topic. That can’t necessarily be said of Andy Sturdevant’s book about place, Potluck Supper with Meeting to Follow. The 233-page collection of short pieces (called essays…
Backswing, short stories by Aaron Burch, reviewed by Jeremy Griffin

There’s this great video on YouTube of the late Kurt Vonnegut giving a lecture on story shapes. Standing before a chalkboard in a dusty brown blazer, the author graphs out some of the more common narrative arcs, the idea being that the more familiar one is with the shape of stories, the easier it is…
Going Home Nowhere and Fast, fiction by Nathan Blake, reviewed by Gavin Tomson

Nathan Blake’s first, slim chapbook of stories, Going Home Nowhere and Fast, is more of a sample than a cycle. Not only does the collection offer few overarching concerns or ideas; little unifies Blake’s style, save his drive to experiment with it. And experiment he does. From “Ward” (a post-apocalypse narrative, told from the perspective…
Beside Myself, stories by Ashley Farmer, reviewed by James R. Gapinski

Ashley Farmer’s Beside Myself has plenty of surreal imagery and an accelerated pace, but the collection feels oddly calm. It’s a book about introspection rather than bombshell plot twists. The characters are constantly turning the narrative inward, and there’s a sense of nostalgic distance in many stories—the kind of clarity that comes with time. Consider…
What Came Before, a novel by Gay Degani, reviewed by Len Kuntz

Within the first two paragraphs of Gay Degani’s novel, What Came Before, the reader is thrust into a story that sizzles: I can’t run. Can’t breathe. Dry kernels blow through my lips. I wake up sweating, legs tangled in sheets, eyes gritty, mouth dry, my brain jammed together like frozen broccoli. I rattle my head…
Last Word, a novella by Jonathan Blum, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Set against the backdrop of changing technologies, cyber-bullying, and blended families, Jonathan Blum’s novella Last Word tells of Kip Langer and his son, Eric, as Kip attempts to understand a boy connected to him by blood and little else. Facing both a civil liberty negligence suit and his thirteen-year-old son’s expulsion from his Jewish middle…
Travel Notes, an episodic novel by Stanley Crawford, reviewed by Dan Townsend

I. On the surface, Travel Notes by Stanley Crawford is glib satire, in line with Catch-22 or Vonnegut’s Slapstick. The novel is episodic, owing to the tradition of the farcical travelogue. Promotional materials compare the story to a “fever dream”. I’m not sure what that means, fortunate as I’ve been never to have had a fever…
[Sic], a Dead/Book plagiarism by Davis Schneiderman, reviewed by Paul Albano

Davis Schneiderman’s writing is typically propelled by a kind of palpable kinetic energy—an explosive proliferation of images, concepts, ideas, and well … words that collide and intersect in the strangest of ways. This is most evident in his 2010 novel Drain, set in the desiccated basin of what used to be Lake Michigan, amidst a…
Nick Kocz on Nine Rabbits, an autobiographical novel by Virginia Zaharieva (trans. Angela Rodel)

Manda, Virginia Zaharieva’s fictional alter-ego in her intensely autobiographical first novel, Nine Rabbits, leads the kind of wild, globe-trotting life that would make most people envious. A successful poet, magazine publisher, television and radio personality, mother, and psychoanalyst, she’s dogged throughout her life by the abuse she suffered as a young girl at the hands…