Category: Reviews & Criticism
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Review: Dave Fitzgerald on Cialis, Verdi, Gin, Jag, a novel by Adam Johnson
In my younger and more vulnerable years, I used to have a very bad habit that routinely got me into trouble. And I call it a habit, but really it was probably something closer to a crosswired tic—a kind of subconscious psychic defense mechanism—I couldn’t help it, I swear—but regardless, my insistence on its innocuous,…
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Review & Interview: Kristina T. Saccone on Sue Mell’s Giving Care
“I need more pills.” My mom’s texts arrive throughout my day—during back-to-back work meetings, while I’m driving to pick up my seven-year old son from school, and at all hours. “I need more pills.” “Can you get me more meds. I’ve run out.” But she isn’t out of pills; my mom has dementia. The texts…
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“The Lilac Trash Enjamber”: A Review of Johannes Göransson’s Summer by PJ Lombardo
South Bend, Indiana, is a magnet for floral-horror. Summer there is so bright and blue it feels like a threat: poison grass, lively weeds, green fingers stabbing up the cracks on the westside pavement. Men wander in public and shout and wave their arms. Foxes dart. Gusts of real life. In the post-industrial midwest, terroristic…
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Review: Jacob M. Appel on Tyler C. Gore’s My Life of Crime: Essays and Other Entertainments
Digression has been recognized as a distinct talent since at least the twilight of the Roman Republic when Cicero served up tangents in defense of Sestius. Sterne hailed digressions as “the sunshine” of literature; Bradbury praised them as “the soul of wit.” From Dante and Milton to Murakami and Nicholson Baker, the art of meandering…
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“A visible light in the gathering darkness”: Peter Valente on Ennio Moltedo’s Poetry Collection Night
On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile during a coup d’état supported by the United States, overthrowing the democratically elected left-wing government of Salvador Allende. During Pinochet’s seventeen-year authoritarian military dictatorship, he persecuted leftists, socialists, and critics of his regime, which resulted in the executions and imprisonment of thousands of people, and…
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They Can Take It Out, a poetry collection by Cheryl Clark Vermeulen, reviewed by Anna Zumbahlen
The first poem of They Can Take It Out presents a recognizable scene: Halloween, children in synthetics, the speaker babysitting, reading, observing. But inflecting the voice is the specter of illness, which disrupts the security of the holiday and whatever memories or familiar images might attend it. Cheryl Clark Vermeulen’s collection takes stock of things…
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“The One That Scares You Most”: Robert Crooke Reviews You Have Reached Your Destination by Louise Marburg
As implied in its title, Louise Marburg’s latest, award-winning collection features lives in transition. Each tale is a journey centered on a woman who appears at first to be secure in love, education, professional achievement, affluence, or all four. But we soon observe the intrusion of an unsettling personal experience or family issue previously held…
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Birth of Eros, a novel by Debra Di Blasi, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald
Size matters. I have yet to forget the first time I read those words, (and yes, in the exact context you’re thinking), back in the blissfully naïve early days of the internet, when the Nigerian Prince was literally the only scam we had to worry about, and chain e-mails were still kind of fun (kind…
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A World Beyond Cardboard, a fiction chapbook by Jonathan Cardew, reviewed by Claire Polders
Jonathan Cardew’s collection of twelve tales is both an honest and an ironic dive into our humanity. In the marvelous title story, this ambiguity is obvious from the first sentence: “Mum died so dad took us on a holiday to France.” The family’s grief doesn’t stop life. On the contrary, the grief demands that they…
Heavy Feather Review 