Category: Reviews & Criticism
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“Inventory of Doubt”: A Reflection on Form and Complex Language in Landon Godfrey’s Inventory of Doubts
Landon Godfrey is it treat to the poet who likes to read the comical and the complex. But for this reviewer, the real star of The Poetry within Inventory of Doubts is the poet’s dedication and loyalty to the consistency of form. On each page for the most part with a few exceptions, Godfrey lays…
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The Three Veils of Ibn Oraybi, a novella by Vincent Czyz, reviewed by Jeffrey Kahrs
The Three Veils of Ibn Oraybi is packed with literary juice: It’s mythical like magical realism, yet historical in that we detect Ottoman and Caucasian outlines enclosing the edges of the tale. The novella is as plotted as a detective story, surprising us with its twists and turns, and it is a morality tale. The…
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Corrupted Vessels, a swallow::tale press novella by Briar Ripley Page, reviewed by June Martin
Briar Ripley Page’s novella, Corrupted Vessels, from swallow::tale press, is unconcerned with the truth. Not in the unreliable narrator sense, where we have reason to doubt the story which is relayed to us—indeed, none of the four narrators are afforded the chance to mislead us any more than they, themselves, are misled or misinformed about…
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A Review of Aimee Parkison’s Sister Séance by Stephen Daly
Set in Massachusetts c. 1865, Aimee Parkison’s novel Sister Séance presents the haunted world of a family with many dark secrets, and how those secrets can rise unexpectedly and wreak havoc on the living. We are introduced to a family of four sisters—the Hayden girls—who, each very different from each other, carry the memories of a troubled…
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Deadheading and Other Stories, an award-winning short-story collection by Beth Gilstrap, reviewed by Drew Belle Elsey
I was born 700 miles away from the Carolinas, on the other side of the Mississippi, away from mountain peaks, cabins in the woods and piers jutting into the ocean. But as I was reading Beth Gilstrap’s award-winning Deadheading, I could smell the chicken sizzling in full-fat butter and okra crisping in cornmeal on my…
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Those Fantastic Lives, strange stories by Bradley Sides, reviewed by Philip Clapper
When we read stories that contain both the beauty of the world and its gloom, we can see our reality for what it truly is. Bradley Sides’ new collection Those Fantastic Lives contains compelling pieces of fiction that use the speculative lens to terrify, delight, and aid us in pondering the true reality around us,…
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You’re Pretty Gay, a short story collection by Drew Pisarra, reviewed by Jarrod Campbell
The ease with which queer lives can, in the blink of an eye, turn from something mundane into a moment of incredulous absurdity becomes commonplace the moment a person accepts that truth about themselves. Many components add together and create complex formulae necessary for any concoction: childhood longing and distress, adolescent anxiety, adult damages, to…
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Little Eyes, a new novel by Samanta Schweblin, reviewed by Shannon Nakai
In its eyecatching green-and-white cover and deceptively simple title, Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes offers a playful, incisive critique on what it means to follow a global trend in our increasingly connected, yet increasingly virtual culture. With the contemporary feel and multinarrative structure à la Tommy Orange or Marlon James, Schweblin invites us into workspaces, bedrooms,…
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How He Loved the Bones, a new chapbook by poet Caitlin Scarano, reviewed by Jonathan Kelly
Caitlin Scarano’s latest chapbook How He Loved the Bones takes us on a journey of recovery as we traverse the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Virginia—the locus of trauma both individual and collective. This work neither romanticizes nor condemns Appalachia; it situates the region within a broader mechanism of historical, patriarchal oppression while positing a…
Heavy Feather Review 