Category: Reviews & Criticism

“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…
“The Bio-Mechanical Language of Universal Emancipation”: Edward J. Matthews Reads Libretto Lunaversitol by Andrew C. Wenaus & Kenji Siratori

In Libretto Lunaversitol: Notes Towards a Glottogenetic Process, a pata-mathematical writing project composed and created by Andrew C. Wenaus & Kenji Siratori, the English language is pulverized into phonetic fragments that slowly drift like stars across the night sky. The text is written in a radicalized aleatory language that does not reflect any kind of…
“Dear Society, It’s Not Just a Phase”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Lol Tolhurst’s Historical Memoir Goth

Recently, Entertainment Weekly released a list of the 22 “most important goths in pop culture.” Of course the list included perennial favorites like The Craft’s Nancy Downs, NCIS’ Abby Sciuto, and South Park’s goth kids. It also included some surprises like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander and Adventure Time’s Marceline. Nonetheless, the…
Fiction Review: Alex DiFrancesco Reads Tobias Caroll’s Novel In the Sight

While In the Sight, Tobias Carroll’s third novel, is definitely a road novel of a dark America, it’s also a novel with a hook. The main character, Farrier, sells a brain-hacking drug that was created by him and other members of a secret society that’s now defunct. The disintegration of this secret society remains largely…
Poetry Review: G.H. Mosson Reads Hafiz’s Little Book of Life

The 14th century Persian poet Hafez, also spelled in English Hafiz, is one of Iran’s most cherished poets, a Sufi poet working within Islamic culture much like the mystical Sufi poet Rumi. Hafez lived in the city of Shiraz, where he was renowned as a professional reciter of the Koran from memory as well as…
“Coupledom, Divorce, and Time’s Fluidity”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Eugene Lim’s Novel Fog & Car

Rife with love, melancholia, grief, and a supernatural hint, Eugene Lim’s debut novel Fog & Car is a psychological mindbender with the potential to reshape and redefine fiction. It follow Jim Fog, who after a divorce finds himself marooned in a small Midwestern town. Meanwhile, his ex, Sarah Car, seems to skip any regret or…
Fiction Review: Jess Bowers Reads Katharine Coldiron’s Collection Wire Mothers

None of the five short stories in Katharine Coldiron’s debut collection Wire Mothers are specifically about psychologist Harry Harlow’s attachment experiments with infant rhesus macaques and wire/cloth “mothers.” Instead, Wire Mothers earns its title through accretion, as the characters in each of Coldiron’s stories seek comfort from others yet remain unable to connect, just like…