Category: Reviews & Criticism

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…
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…
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,…
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…
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,…
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…
“Cloud-bellies Full of Virgin Birds”: Arturo Desimone Reviews Tension: Rupture, poetry by Cutter Streeby, paintings by Michael Haight

In the prologue to Tension : Rupture poet Cutter Streeby admits to the unpredicted challenges of collaboration between two artists who, while using different media, deal with strongly interrelated autobiographical leitmotifs of substance abuse, resulting in a requiem for the past. The Tension : Rupture of the title seems to refer, therefore, not only to…
“Buoyant Also”: Liana Jahan Imam on Aisha Sasha John’s TO STAND AT THE PRECIPICE ALONE AND REPEAT WHAT IS WHISPERED

Aisha Sasha John’s most recent chapbook begins with a short page that might double as scrolling titles at the start of a horror film: “In the fall of 2018, I left Toronto for Vancouver—the city where I spent the bulk of my childhood and in whose suburbs my parents still live.” On a separate line:…
Saturday Morning Chapbook: Ryan Bollenbach on Expendables, a poetry collection by Emma Villazón

In Emma Villazón’s own words, the title of her first collection Temporeras, or “migrant woman farm hands,” translated by Thomas Rothe as Expendables, compares the precarious labor of temporary female farm workers with the labor of female freelancers who “manufacture intellectual property” for companies whose “raw material is the word.” Although, for the speakers in…