Category: Reviews & Criticism

  • My Dead Book, a novel by Nate Lippens, reviewed by Shane Jesse Christmass

    My Dead Book, a novel by Nate Lippens, reviewed by Shane Jesse Christmass

    Nate Lippens’ first novel is an instant classic and personal favorite, an honorific remembrance of people who have passed, collections and fragments of memory, where shower curtains look like used condoms, and clothes are more sealant than fabric: The bathroom was tiny and had a shower stall with a plastic curtain that looked like a…

  • Glass Bikini, a new poetry collection by Kristin Bock, reviewed by Michael Kleiza

    Glass Bikini, a new poetry collection by Kristin Bock, reviewed by Michael Kleiza

    To enter Kristin Bock’s world is to fall off a precipice, get sucked into a black hole of the weird, and then come out the other side even weirder. She transforms a world you know into one so surreal, it flies past you only to reverse and collide with the back of your head, implanting…

  • Dave Fitzgerlad Reviews Amygdalatropolis, a novel by B.R. Yeager

    Dave Fitzgerlad Reviews Amygdalatropolis, a novel by B.R. Yeager

    For the first few pages, I thought B.R. Yeager’s Amygdalatropolis was some kind of cyberpunk dystopia. Its protagonist, /1404er/, exists in a hermetic, digital world populated entirely by other formless entities who share the name /1404er/, and his interactions therein revolve entirely around the sharing and discussion (and eventually, creation) of only the absolute ugliest,…

  • Kinderkrankenhaus, a play by Jesi Bender, reviewed by Andrew Farkas

    Kinderkrankenhaus, a play by Jesi Bender, reviewed by Andrew Farkas

    Children’s literature, television, entertainment (in general) used to be weird. We could go all the way back to William Blake, Lewis Carroll, and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” sure. But then, when I was in graduate school, I was sent reeling one day when some of my peers were angered and even confused by metafiction because,…

  • Search History, a new novel by Eugene Lim, reviewed by Michael Wong

    Search History, a new novel by Eugene Lim, reviewed by Michael Wong

    There’s a line in Eugene Lim’s Search History that is repeated several times throughout the novel. A character declares something they’ve heard impossible and their interlocutor quickly retorts: “Of course it isn’t.” And the matter, whatever it is, is simply left at that. It’s a refrain that tells us a bit about the characters involved,…

  • ANGEL HOUSE, a novel by David Leo Rice, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald

    ANGEL HOUSE, a novel by David Leo Rice, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald

    ANGEL HOUSE is the kind of novel that will mean something different to everyone who reads it, and indeed, will likely mean something different to me if I read it again in a few years, and yet again if I read it a third time somewhere down the line (all distinct possibilities). Because of this, I’ll go ahead…

  • “Museum at the End of the World”: Stephen Scott Whitaker on Jennifer Nelson’s third poetry collection, Harm Eden

    “Museum at the End of the World”: Stephen Scott Whitaker on Jennifer Nelson’s third poetry collection, Harm Eden

    Jennifer Nelson’s third book, Harm Eden, is a warning. Composed largely in short free verse containers, Harm Eden’s exigency is collapse, state violence, wrapped in a culture that has become more and more disposable and absurd, a culture that contributes to systemic inequity, and perpetuates late-stage capitalism. Nelson gives us a representation of balkanized Western…

  • “A Scream in the Ear from a Passing Car”: Dustin Cole on In Singing, He Composed a Song, a new novella by Jeremy Stewart

    “A Scream in the Ear from a Passing Car”: Dustin Cole on In Singing, He Composed a Song, a new novella by Jeremy Stewart

    Jeremy Stewart’s newly released experimental novella is set in late 1990s Prince George, British Columbia, during the chilly month of November. It features the high school student protagonist, John Stevenson. John’s a rocker, dope smoker, cigarette “breather,” poet, and slacker. John’s a walker. He operates as the ponderous fulcrum of In Singing, He Composed a…

  • Pink Mountain on Locust Island, a debut experimental novel by Jamie Marina Lau, reviewed by Shyanne Hamrick

    Pink Mountain on Locust Island, a debut experimental novel by Jamie Marina Lau, reviewed by Shyanne Hamrick

    In author and music producer Jamie Marina Lau’s debut experimental novel, Pink Mountain on Locust Island, fifteen-year-old protagonist Monk lives with her “grumpy brown couch” of a father—a washed-up art teacher who spends his days watching nature documentaries, shouting game show answers, and catering to his budding Xanax dependency. When she meets artistic high school…