Category: Reviews & Criticism

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…
“When the Horrors at Home Are Scarier Than Any Monsters”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Darrin Doyle’s Novel Let Gravity Seize the Dead

Darrin Doyle’s Let Gravity Seize the Dead invites us into a new kind of psychological horror, one that relies on brevity and compression to create the subtle scare tactics that keep us engrossed. Within the novel’s 141 pages, we uncover a trauma-laden story that examines the past, the present, and the myriad of ways one…
Poetry Review: Gina Thayer Reads Jenny Irish’s Poetry Collection Hatch

If you were to open my copy of Jenny Irish’s prose poetry collection, Hatch, you would find margins filled with penciled half-thoughts and doodles of anatomically dubious fireflies. I’m not usually one to mark up a book, but Hatch works in mysterious ways, subtly shifting how we interact with the world. Through linked prose poems…
Fiction Review: Adam McPhee Reads Scott Mitchel May’s Novel Awful People

A reunion of a group of friends looms on the horizon of Awful People, the new novel by Scott Mitchel May. The friends, whose lives once loosely revolved around employment at the Antiquated Brewing Company in Madison, Wisconsin, haven’t seen each other since 2009, their ties shattered after one of their number developed LSD-induced telekinetic…