Category: Reviews & Criticism

Two Murals, a poetry collection by Jesús Castillo, reviewed by Shannon Nakai

Gracing the cover of Jesús Castillo’s latest book Two Murals is a bi-sectioned black-and-white image: half a fingerprint merged with half a section of tree rings. Both signify the natural coding system for each of these organisms and are conjoined to suggest inherent connectedness. This symbiosis is the theme that underscores Two Murals: humans’ relationship…
Whatever Feels Like Home, a flash fiction collection by Susan Rukeyser, reviewed by Alice Kaltman

Susan Rukeyser’s new chapbook may be short in stature, a mere twenty pages, but there is nothing slim about the rich, emotionally resonant prose within. Whatever Feels Like Home reads like a songbook, each of the ten stories, melodic and masterful, ask that age-old query; What truly is home? With Rukeyser at the helm, the…
“Maternal Monsters”: E.B. Schnepp Reviews Shapeshifting by Michelle Ross

Michelle Ross’ second collection, Shapeshifting, can only be described as a procession of horrifying transformations. More specifically, this is a series of horrifying female transformations that reveal with startling clarity the lack of agency that comes from existing in a feminine body, particularly when it comes to childbearing and its corresponding vulnerabilities. This transformation is demonstrated…
“A Disquieting Truth in Broken Hearts”: Robert Crooke Reviews Proof of Me & Other Stories by Erica Plouffe Lazure

In subtly connected tales of life in a small, Eastern North Carolina town, Erica Plouffe Lazure writes as if sharing yarns about her own extended family. She knows her people that well. And she has Eudora Welty’s sense of the way people and places determine each other’s fate. Thus, a naturalist’s field excursion in “Spawning…
What Are You, a new novel by Lindsay Lerman, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald

In some ways, this feels like the book I’ve been waiting for my whole life. I have been calling myself a feminist since I was a but a shy, sheltered 16-year-old, diving headlong into Alice Walker, Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, and Inga Muscio to impress my first girlfriend while my friends were mostly still reading…
Book Review: Shannon Wolf on Bud Smith’s novel Teenager

Collectively, we’ve been obsessed with the Bonnie and Clyde narrative for decades. In the 1950s, we were a nation held captive by the spree killings of Charles Starkweather and his teenaged girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate in Nebraska and Wyoming. Those murders inspired the Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino collaboration Natural Born Killers in 1994. So,…
A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair, stories by Steve Gergley, reviewed by Kassie Bohannon

In A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair, Steve Gergley provides several perspectives on the titular experience, including everything from epic battles between man and God in the desert to surreal in-between moments where a couple fights to revive passion while also fighting for their eternal souls. There are hilarious moments with unprofessional dentists, sorrowful…
The Year of the Horses, a memoir by Courtney Maum, reviewed by Shannon Wolf

For Courtney Maum, The Year of the Horses followed a period of intense internal struggle. A crisis of identity as her daughter turned two brought on a bout of depression and insomnia so significant, it caused her life—and marriage—to stall. She found herself at a crossroads and needed to take the right path—and being a…
“The Mystery of Growing Up”: Robert Crooke Reviews When Me and God Were Little by Mads Nygaard

In this complex and personal novel, dedicated to his father, Mads Nygaard spins a web of mysteries around family secrets, religious obsession, and psychic unrest in a bleakly rugged Danish setting. It is Nordic fairy tale, social history, and Danish-Lutheran parable in equal parts. And a wondrous narrative featuring innocently cynical observations by a seven-year-old…