Category: Reviews & Criticism
-
Review: William Henderson on Earth, Air, Fire, Water: The Elementals, a novel by Francesca Lia Block
Billed as an “adult novel,” The Elementals, by Francesca Lia Block (The Weetzie Bat books, Guarding the Moon) catapults us into the world of Ariel, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, struggling to make sense of her first year of college, her mother’s bout with cancer, and the disappearance of a friend. She’s bullied,…
-
“Dog-eared”: William Henderson Reviews The End of Your Life Book Club, a novel by Will Schwalbe
You know from the beginning of Will Schwalbe’s The End of Your Life Book Club that his mother, Mary Anne, is dead. Pancreatic cancer. And you know from the beginning that books have played a major part of Will’s life (he’s the former senior vice president and editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books). And you know from…
-
“Dog-eared”: William Henderson Reviews The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
I’ve enjoyed Jasper Fforde since his first novel, The Eyre Affair, introduced us to Thursday Next and her adventures in book world, and then my appreciation for Fforde deepened as he took a break from Thursday and began a series of books based on nursery rhymes and the detective who investigates nursery crimes. Now, Fforde returns…
-
“Dog-eared”: William Henderson on Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
To: YouFrom: Heavy Feather ReviewRe: Where’d You Go, Bernadette You know from the beginning that Bernadette Fox is missing, and that her daughter, Bee, is doing what she can to find her mother, including reading e-mails to, from, and about Bernadette; reviewing memorandums sent home from her school, the Galer Street School; reviewing presentation transcripts;…
-
“Dog-eared: What Matters Most, How You Feel When You’re Together”: William Henderson on David Leviathan’s Every Day
The main character in Every Day, the new young-adult novel by David Levithan (one-half of the team behind bestsellers like Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist; Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares; Will Grayson, Will Grayson) is both—and neither—boy and girl, and short one reference to gender on the back cover (which may be fixed by now, since…
-
“Coming of Age Glacially”: A Review of Jerry Gabriel’s Drowned Boy by Robert Boucheron
Jerry Gabriel quickly sets the scene in his first book of stories, linked by place and characters. In “Boys Industrial School,” the third sentence reads: “Beyond Nate and Donnie Holland there was just the desolate November woods and the endless hills and Milford Run meandering next to the road among the thickets.” The entire book…
-
“Less Pom-Pom, More Circumstance”: William Henderson Reviews Dare Me by Megan Abbott
Cheerleading and friendship, in sixteen-year-old Addy Hanlon’s world—brilliantly created by Edgar Award-winning Megan Abbott in the just-out Dare Me—vie for Most Competitive Sport in the weeks leading up to the big game, where a scout may just help the varsity cheerleading squad get a shot at regionals. What you’ve heard about cheerleaders, and what you’ve…
-
Review: Jason Carnahan on God’s Autobio, stories by Rolli
If God’s Autobio, by Rolli, is to be described as any singular thing, it is easily a thesis on voice. A tremendous list of characters inhabits the stories, from the pompous banal to the British Almighty, each an immediate identity which is less introduced and more splashed upon the page in a gleeful display of certainty. Characters…
-
“Curating,” an essay about the love poem by J. Bradley
Curating Inevitably, love fails, through break ups, divorce, or death. For most, this is incredibly hard to swallow, except for the poet who continues to write love poems. The concern from some potential partners is that they will become fodder, research, like instead of fucking them behind the stacks in some unused part of the…
Heavy Feather Review 