Category: Reviews & Criticism

Breakfast in Fur, a poetry collection by Jessica Murray, reviewed by Beth McDermott

In a world no longer quiet with belief, Breakfast in Fur, Jessica Murray’s debut collection of poetry, refuses to entertain naïve assumptions by imparting a sense that what peace there was, has been obliterated. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag writes, “No ‘we’ should be taken for granted when the subject is looking…
Book Review: Alex Carrigan on Afterword, a novel by Nina Schuyler

As we continue to debate the ethics regarding artificial intelligence in this day and age, one of the main questions regarding the abilities of AI is that if it can do something, should it? If it can create art or write term papers, should the AI be chastised for this when it was specifically programmed…
The Kirschbaum Lectures, a new novel by Seth Rogoff, reviewed by Jacob M. Appel

Who is Sy Kirschbaum? Is he a “neurotic anarchist” rebelling against society’s total systems of control as his analyst at Vermont’s Mountain View Clinic claims? Or is he a literary-translator-turned-mystical-gumshoe on a tortuous pursuit of purloined manuscripts and exegetic enigmas across Mitteleuropa from Weimar Berlin to post-Velvet Prague? And on which side of that diaphanous…
“Secret Rewards” Craft Essay: Jolene McIlwain on Writing PTSD in Fiction

You don’t want to think it’s your heart. You want to think it’s a pulled muscle, pinched nerve, or bad posture because you’ve always forgotten and slouched. But you agree to the stress test because if it is your heart, this is an early find. You’re only forty-seven. There’s time to repair. It’s been happening…
Fiction Review: Dave Fitzgerald Reads Agustin Maes’ Newborn

“It’s about a dead baby.” This is what author Agustin Maes will reliably answer if you ask him about his book Newborn. Soft-spoken, and humble nearly to the point of bashfulness (this despite being a runner-up for the Paris Literary Prize his first time out the gate), he doesn’t always seem to grasp the weight…
Foundations, a new novel by Abigail Stewart, reviewed by Hayli May Cox

In three dazzling parts, Abigail Stewart’s Foundations follows a trio of women across time, all of them connected by a single Dallas house. Bunny is a housewife who longs for genuine connection and friendship outside of the oppressive suburban life she’s found herself moored to. Jessica is an actress fleeing LA to find something else,…
This Rancid Mill, an Alex Damage novel by Kyle Decker, reviewed by Zachary Kocanda

The main character of Kyle Decker’s novel This Rancid Mill doesn’t fit the bill of a typical detective. Maybe it’s the three-inch-high blue mohawk. Or the Dead Kennedys patch on his leather jacket. Or the one-liners like: “It took me the span of a Dee Dee Ramone count-off to decide she was my kind of…
“Confetti Corrupted”: John Trefry’s 2015 fourth person, disincorporating text Thy Decay Thou Seest by Thy Desire, reviewed by Matthew Kinlin

Thy Decay Thou Seest by Thy Desire, a title both seductive and confounding, is the second work of John Trefry, released on Inside the Castle in 2015; the independent press he founded and named after Kafka’s final novel. Almost a decade later and the work demonstrates even more so, as described by writer Rachael de…
“Centers of Gravity in Chloe N. Clark’s Short Story Collection Patterns of Orbit”: A Book Review by Patrick Thomas Henry

In a letter frequently quoted in craft essays and books on the art of fiction, Anton Chekhov wrote that writers of short fiction should “[l]et two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.” Underlying this assertion is the prime directive that Chekhov issues to writers: in the private solar system…