Category: Reviews & Criticism

Micah Zevin Reviews Ruth Danon’s New Poetry Collection, Word Has It

The word has insurmountable potential and power to guide readers on and through a seemingly endless but ultimately finite voyage. Word Has It, Ruth Danon’s latest poetry collection, is a philosophical three-section, chapter-book prose poem, where, Word, its main character—whose thoughts and narrative are italicized—is a kind of literary, film noir-ish detective searching for everything…
Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales, Orrin Grey’s third short story collection, reviewed by Maxwell Malone

“Upstairs, the chair waited, with its bloody hooks and screws, and he knew exactly who it waited for.” —from “Guignol” by Orrin Grey Rarely is it possible to say that a short story collection manages to not only taxonomize, but diligently explore, the massive, fractal landscape of the horror genre without forsaking its unifying…
All That Man Is, David Szalay’s fourth novel, reviewed by Ray Barker

British author David Szalay’s latest novel—a term which doesn’t capture Szalay’s unique approach to the genre—is a restless, schizophrenic thing. Divided into nine sections featuring nine different men of at least six nationalities, set in approximately thirteen countries, the canvas Szalay covers is impressively wide. The men range in age from seven to seventy-three, and…
Erin Flanagan Reviews Jamel Brinkley’s Debut Story Collection, A Lucky Man

Absent fathers abound in this debut collection of stories, leaving behind their complicated legacies of race and love. As Eric says in “Everything the Mouth Eats,” “Isn’t it family that, in so many ways, determines our approach to life’s deceptions?” One feels the holes left by these absent fathers on every page, as the characters…
The Dogs of Detroit, Brad Felver’s debut short story collection, reviewed by Michael A. Ferro

If ever there was a more convincing short story collection of America’s disheartening penchant for anger, violence, and grief, especially among these desperate modern times, I haven’t come across it. With The Dogs of Detroit, Brad Felver announces himself as the twenty-first century Midwestern heir apparent of Cormac McCarthy—a writer unafraid to expose the flawed,…
While You Were Gone, a novel by Sybil Baker, reviewed by Katharine Coldiron

While You Were Gone is a lovely read. It’s thoughtful, and deeply felt, and well-written, and structured with competence. It gently crosses a few genres: women’s fiction, Southern Gothic, literary homage, and what I indelicately think of as Dead/Dying Parent Lit. It balances between the three narrating consciousnesses of three sisters raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee,…
“Life During Wartime”: Matthew Morgenstern on Matt Young’s Iraq War memoir Eat the Apple

In 1979’s “Life During Wartime” from the Talking Heads, David Byrne sings: The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,I’m getting used to it nowLived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto,I’ve lived all over this town Though New Wave doesn’t figure into Matt Young’s Eat the Apple, these detached, ostensibly all-encompassing lyrics characterize Young’s…
Love Songs for a Lost Continent, Anita Felicelli’s debut collection, reviewed by Mahnoor Khan

Anita Felicelli’s Love Songs for a Lost Continent is a collection of stories that is deeply-rooted in everyday labors of identity as we go through life—as friends, parents, lovers, and individuals. They are stories of people who are not looking to be heroes but are characters who find themselves facing their worst. As the author…
Clues from the Animal Kingdom, Christopher Kennedy’s fifth poetry collection, reviewed by Jonah Davis

When the life we are born into isolates us, leaves us in an inescapable malaise, when ‘pain is the only feeling’ and we’re forced to watch time pass by through the eyes of an animal—where do we go? To religion? Family? Relationships? No. Here there are no gods, here family is but an empty word…