Category: Reviews & Criticism

Review: Jody Hobbs Hesler on Lisa Cupolo’s story collection Have Mercy on Us

The ten keenly observed stories in Lisa Cupolo’s award-winning debut collection Have Mercy On Us usher us into a world of strained relationships. Whether in Kenya, Canada, Florida, or California, every character struggles to exert more power than their relationships allow, to matter more than they do—to themselves or to other significant players in their lives. In…
On Joke Architecture in Elise Houcek’s Tractatus: “FINAL PROOF OF THE ETERNAL SUBJECTIVITY OF LANGUAGE!” by Maxwell Rabb

Words are playthings, and by no means is this trivial. There is an unadulterated joy to constructing language—to cutting up and arranging the pieces. There is suspense, an unalloyed momentum, to the words that endure tangibly in poetry. Unfortunately, language is frequently inundated by a deluge of abstractions, forcing the simple pleasure of words to…
“All Was Lost”: Robert Crooke Reviews Men in My Situation, a novel by Per Petterson

A real-life tragedy haunts this beautiful, touchingly honest novel by celebrated Norwegian author Per Petterson. The event in question is a fire that in 1990 destroyed the Scandinavian Star ferryboat during an overnight voyage between Norway and Denmark. This profound catastrophe, which claimed the lives of 159 passengers—including Petterson’s parents, a brother, and a nephew—has…
Caw Caw Phony, 21st-century nature poems by Michael Sikkema, reviewed by William Lessard

Saxophonist and composer Marion Brown mapped the pastoral for avant-garde jazz. “Afternoon of a Georgia Faun,” the title piece of his 1971 album, explores deciduous sonics beyond the jagged urbanism of Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, and his own late 60s work. In an interview for 1973’s “Notesto Afternoon of a Georgia Faun: Views and…
NSFW, a new novel by David Scott Hay, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald

Dystopian fiction is so hot right now. Hot like teen vampires before it. And child wizards before that. Hot like Chris Pine, and Michael B. Jordan, and J-Law. Hot like a Ron DeSantis book-burning. In Florida. In July. Hot like our annually warming planet. Speaking as someone who read The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New…
Book Review: “The Company of Strangers, Jen Michalski’s Collection of Tiny Heartbreaks and Keen Hopes” by Rosalia Scalia

Jen Michalski’s newest book, The Company of Strangers, gives us 194 pages of tiny heartbreaks and keen hopes. In a collection of 15 short stories, we see a slice of America through an array of characters who strive to manage and navigate complex lives, and at times, unexpected, heartbreaking events that befall them with the…
“The Harmonic Structure of a Life”: Ryan Nowlin Reviews The Unwanted Sounds, a poetry collection by Lorraine Lupo

Writing letters to Lorraine Lupo over a period of three years was an extension of our friendship. Also, we engaged in dialogic literary criticism. Every time I sat down to write in response to a letter from Lorraine, not only did I reflect on what was happening in our current lives but also what I…
Zachary Kocanda Reviews Kevin Maloney’s Novel The Red-Headed Pilgrim

How far would you go to live the life you imagined for yourself when you were young and anything was possible? To avoid working for your dad’s friend’s company for the rest of your life and hating yourself? Kevin Maloney’s new novel, The Red-Headed Pilgrim, chronicles the misadventures of the titular man-child—also named Kevin Maloney—on…
“And Then What”: A Review of Julia Guez’s The Certain Body by Eric David Helms

“The dark is very dark,” Guez writes in “Still Life When All Our Symptoms Seem to Have Symptoms of Their Own,” a poem folded within The Certain Body, a collection which, over a span of three sections, examines the brave new world of grief and isolation during quarantine. With a tongue that combines “moon blood…