Category: Reviews & Criticism

“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

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

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…
Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments, a collection by Jackson Bliss, reviewed by Titus Chalk

In Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments, Jackson Bliss sets out to stun. Each of the 13 stories in this collection (and the interstitial texts between them) is a reimagining of what a story might be, a subversion of form, a feat of linguistic pyrotechnics, that often portrays mixed-race identity or attempts to establish a…
Psychros, a CLASH Books novel by Charlene Elsby, reviewed by Alex Carrigan

When a person commits suicide, is it merely the final event of the victim’s life, or is it actually the first event in the remainder of the lives of those they left behind? The act of ending one’s life is never just a singular choice, but the result of numerous choices that doesn’t leave just…
“A Dream of Trees and Television and Ghosts,” a nonfiction excerpt from Sarah Kornfield’s The True: A Trilogy of Ghosts

“A Trilogy of Ghosts” is a composite of three books called The True. In 2019, world-renowned Romanian theater director Alexandru Darie died, the news shocking the creative world. Bringing Darie and Romania vividly to life, The True also tells the story of one courageous woman’s cutting through a con artist’s web of lies that mirror global corruption.…
Maison Cristina, a novel by Eugene K. Garber, reviewed by Francis X. Fitzpatrick

Author Eugene K. Garber spins some very dark and grim fairy tales in his neo-Gothic novel Maison Cristina, but does allow occasional light and laughter to enter this supernatural story. The novel opens with the image of a dead man lying at the bottom of a cliff while another man looks down from above. We…
“Logan Berry and the Negative Beyond”: A Review of Run-Off Sugar Crystal Lake by Charlene Elsby

If we’re going to talk about Logan Berry, the question we first need to answer is, how is Cioran’s fall out of time conceived of as a negative eternity? The key concept is to differentiate the fall out of time from a positive eternity. The fall out of time is not a happy return to…
Playlist for the Apocalypse, a new book of poems by Rita Dove, reviewed by Carolyn Oliver

Playlist for the Apocalypse is Rita Dove’s first book of new poems since 2009’s virtuoso Sonata Mulattica (her Collected Poems: 1974–2004, also from W. W. Norton & Company, appeared in 2016), and well worth the twelve-year wait. Expansive in theme, tone, and subject matter across its six sections, Playlist for the Apocalypse defies generalization and…