Category: Reviews & Criticism
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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…
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“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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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Edward M. Cohen’s Before Stonewall, an Awst Press novel selected by T Kira Madden, reviewed by Stephanie Bohland
A life in the closet, a life before Stonewall, was an act of performativity—a daily exercise in trying to simultaneously resist, and exist within, heteronormative expectations. Edward M. Cohen’s Before Stonewall is a collection of vignettes from a world before the gay liberation movement and the fourteen stories within his book, all brought together through…
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The Reincarnations by Nathan Elias, a story collection from Montag Press, reviewed by Pedro Ponce
The elevator pitch version of this review might read something like “Twin Peaks meets Raymond Carver.” In his debut story collection, Nathan Elias reveals the strangeness just beneath the surface of milieus often associated with gritty realism: hotels, hospital rooms, “a bar in Seminole Heights called Hole in the Wall.” These nondescript locales are the…
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I Will Not Name It Except to Say by Lee Sharkey: A Poetry Review by Robert Dunsdon
Young poets, hotheads newly converted and ablaze with ideas, crane their necks and clear their throats, eager for their song to be heard above all, while others further advanced polish their craft and are keen to cultivate an identity. They each have an insistent urge to tell of a discovery, a mystery, a moment of…
Heavy Feather Review 