Category: Reviews & Criticism

“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…
“His Name Is Jonas”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Joshua Chaplinksy’s Novel Letters to the Purple Satin Killer

In November 2023, a BU Today opinion piece posed a pertinent question: “Why are we so obsessed with serial killers?” Three Boston University-affiliated experts weighed in on the topic, one that came into focus after police arrested Rex Heuermann, a man accused of killing three woman whose bodies were found on Long Island’s Gilgo Beach…
Novella Review: Mark Crimmins Reads Ashley Honeysett’s Fictions

Rumors about the death of autofiction have been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, claims—in Publisher’s Weekly and elsewhere—that there is no such thing as an autofictional novel (or novella) are themselves less redolent of fact than of fiction. Ashley Honeysett’s genre-bending hybrid novella Fictions is a sign that, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, autofiction…
Nonfiction Review: Jen Schneider Reads Kat Meads’ These Particular Women

It’s a particular type of writer and a particular type of writing that illuminates (ten-fold over ten essays) as much as it informs. It’s also a particular type of writing and a particular type of writer that uncovers details (oh-so-delicious details) as much as it declares and reveals universal truths. These Particular Women, written by…