Category: Reviews & Criticism

Fiction Review: Vanessa Saunders Reads Annell López’s Collection I’ll Give You a Reason

Annell López’s first book, I’ll Give You A Reason, is masterclass in writing about people on the margins. The winner of the 2023 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize from Feminist Press, this short-story collection delves into themes of exclusion on the grounds of citizenship, race, and mental illness. Set in New Jersey, a haunting sense…
Fiction Review: Hantian Zhang Reads Yuxin Zhao’s Novel The Moons

On the first page of The Moon: Fire Rooster to Earth Dog, Yuxin Zhao states her aesthetic outright: she values fragments more than structure, digression more than destination. The book can be read as a compilation of diary entries, scattered tiny life episodes ordered chronologically and grouped by zodiac signs. Together, in the space outlined…
“Binging an Untitled Original Series Set on Multiple Continents”: Shane Joaquin Jimenez Reads Rupert Taylor’s Novel Please Let Me Destroy You

Reading Rupert Taylor’s riotous, polyphonic debut novel Please Let Me Destroy You is like watching light reflect off a disco ball, spinning radiant, ever-shifting constellations across your mind’s eye. At turns absurdist and psychedelic, the book is an often funny, often tragic, breathless litany of (in no particular order): panic attacks, heartbreaks, humiliations, betrayals, globetrotting…
Fiction Review: Ashley Honeysett Reads Jillian Danback-McGhan’s Collection Midwatch

One of the stories in Jillian Danback-McGhan’s collection of short fiction, Midwatch, is set in the Gulf of Aden, where American troops are boarding fishing vessels, trying to catch pirates by searching for weapons and other evidence of illicit activity. Did you know the U.S. Navy did that? Any military veteran could casually talk about…
“The Dance of Self-Reclamation”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Vincent Czyz’s Novel Sun Eye Moon Eye

At first glance, Vincent Czyz’s Sun Eye Moon Eye might seem like another daunting 500+ page novel. Nonetheless, we would do well to not only not pass judgment on this because of its cover (which is actually quite gorgeous and thought-provoking), but we should not turn away because we fear a lengthy read. Sun Eye…
“All Theory Is Gray”: Matt Martinson Reads Ed Simon’s Devil’s Contract and Confirms Faust and Mephistopheles Are Still with Us

The Faustian bargain, whether in the arts or reality, is alive and well in the twenty-first century. Even in our secular age, we, too, sell our souls for trivial things—e.g., buying an unneeded phone while trying not to think of the slave labor and economic destruction wrought in the collection of its components—or to evil…
“Surrealism and Reality”: Garrett Ashley Reads a Decade of Meg Pokrass’ Flash Fiction in First Law of Holes

My first experience with Meg Pokrass begins with First Law of Holes, a compilation of fourteen-years of flash fiction spanning six collections, plus some beautiful new work. There is a lot to unpack in Pokrass’ stories as she explores illness and care, marriage, divorce, dead spouses, childhood and nostalgia. Reading such a large collection of…
Fiction Review: “The Retro Allure of Dean Monti’s The Monosexual” by Ellen Birkett Morris

It is rare to find a book that seems to have been written just for you, but I found that in Dean Monti’s latest novel, The Monosexual. The novel is a zany romp through an unnamed time period that based on pop culture references (Sinatra, The Ed Sullivan Show, and classic jazz) and treatment of…
Fiction Review: Eleanor J. Bader Reads Sue Mell’s Collection A New Day

The thirteen intertwined short stories in Sue Mell’s A New Day are about women you know. None are extraordinary achievers or headline grabbers. Nonetheless, over the course of thirty years, 1982 to 2012, they get and lose jobs, find new lovers, live through breakups and heartache, battle life-threatening illnesses, and bring new life into the world. Set…