Category: Reviews & Criticism

“A Storytelling Masterclass”: Gillian Perry on Nana Nkweti’s Walking on Cowrie Shells (Graywolf Press)

Nana Nkweti is unafraid. Unafraid to interlace myth and reality. Unafraid to embrace the polyphony of voices that tell her stories. Unafraid to breathe life into characters of differing ages, careers, and moral compasses. Nkweti’s debut collection, Walking on Cowrie Shells, captures the experiences of the fearless—water goddesses, teenage graphic novelists, Akata sisters, immigrants, all…
Andrew Farkas Reviews Adam Tipps Weinstein’s The Airship: Incantations (FC2)

In Thomas Pynchon’s V., some of the characters, Benny Profane in particular, engage in “yo-yoing,” an activity that involves going back and forth between two places for no real reason. A casual contest starts up wherein the competitors see who can yo-yo the farthest, normally won by those who fall asleep on the subway. In…
Outré, a “Hörnblowér” novel by D. Harlan Wilson, reviewed by Evan St. Jones

Intro. The world building in D. Harlan Wilson’s Outré slaps you in the face during its introduction and never shows mercy. Thrusted first upon us is a long cast list featuring fictional actors as well as figures recognizable historically and pop culturally. From there, we’re thrown down a rabbit hole into a dystopian landscape operated…
Mona at Sea, a novel by Elizabeth Gonzalez James, reviewed by Maria Judnick

“I’m unemployed, I’ve never had a boyfriend, I live with my parents in the most boring town on the planet, and I hate myself” are the words Millennial narrator Mona Mireles recites to herself each night as she tries to sleep. Elizabeth Gonzalez James’ debut novel Mona at Sea offers a look into the wickedly…
“the sun I can afford”: Zachary Kinsella on Protest and Compromise in that’s what you get by Sheila Maldonado

that’s what you get, Sheila Maldonado’s second full-length collection, offers rich, emotional weight with a kind of ease that is both precise and involved. Maldonado describes injustice, anger, and conflict in a style unwilling to dwell or become obsessively attached to what she cannot control. Through largely unpunctuated verse, that’s what you get advises us…
“Matthew Burnside Crafts Stories from a Wiki”: Michael Maiello Investigates the novel Wiki of Infinite Sorrows

Wiki is an acronym for “What I Know Is,” and wikis have sprung up all over the internet, covering everything from the breadth of the encyclopedia to the universes occupied by science fiction, fantasy, and comic book narratives. Over decades, we’ve grown accustomed to using and trusting wikis and to accepting that stories crafted from…
Death and So Forth, scintillating short fictions told and retold by Gordon Lish, reviewed by Nathan Blake

“A woman leaves town on business, phones her husband when the plane touches down. ‘How’s the cat?’ she asks. ‘The cat,’ her husband says, ‘is dead.’ ‘You can’t break bad news like that!’ the woman says. ‘Lead with something like, “The cat’s on the roof and I can’t get him down.” Then ease into the…
Trimming England, a satirical almanac of terror by M.J. Nicholls, reviewed by Nora E. Webb

Trimming England, M.J. Nicholls’ latest work of satire, is a brilliant piece of character work. Not so much plot-based, the novel centers around one idea: “In 2021, British Prime Minister Frank Oakface elected to rid each English county of its most irritating citizen.” Those voted out by their community members receive sentences of varying lengths…
“An Examination of My Mother’s Life through the Poetry of Nehassaiu deGannes”: Music for Exile Reviewed by Byron Armstrong

Read aloud, Nehassaiu deGannes’ new book of poetry, Music for Exile, might sound like my grandmother crooning lullabies to the grandchild his mother left behind in Jamaica, or the tears his mother shed over long-distance phone calls, always ending with the same gut-wrenching question. “When are you coming home?” My mother’s name is Gloria, which…