Category: Reviews & Criticism

Fiction Review: Morris Collins Reads Avner Landes’ Novel The Delegation

We might start by asking: what is the goal of the Jewish historical novel? Once diaspora, pogrom, and Shoah have been commemorated, if not commodified, into narrative tropes, what is the Jewish novel beyond formal pastiche? And what would a parody of the Jewish novel look like? Is the parody of the Jewish novel, just…
“What ‘Coming Home’ Truly Means”: Nicole Yurcaba Reviews Michael Ramos’ Memoir The After

Thirteen days before 9/11, Michael Ramos enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to serve as a chaplain’s bodyguard. He had no clue he would be sent to Iraq, and he embraced the posting as well as his combat service until the military determined his skillset was no longer needed. However, after his military career…
Fiction Review: Matt Robertshaw Reads Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s Novel The Fun Times Brigade

It’s rare to see yourself depicted so tangibly in a novel. In many ways Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s Fun Times Brigade is about me. The protagonist, Amy Scholl, is a struggling singer-songwriter turned children’s musician who is grappling with the vicissitudes of success and artistic fulfillment. Me too. She is also a parent experiencing the profound joys…
Book Review: Mitch Levenberg Reads Caroline Hagood’s Essay in Prose Poems Death and Other Speculative Fictions

There are ghosts and then there are ghosts. Caroline Hagood writes about the latter. Not the ghosts of vengeance, or the kind that make walls sweat, but ghosts of love, heartbreak, longing, the ghost within us, the ghosts lined up along the viewing stand of our unconscious minds, that both cheer and haunt us, the…
Poetry Review: Rob Stanton Reads Kimberly Lambright’s Collection Doom Glove

Kimberly Lambright’s debut collection, Ultra-Cabin, introduced a poet possessing that one thing we all—surely?—want from poetry: a genuinely original way of seeing the “nothing new.” But she also knew that a surrealism that veers too far or too quickly into the wholly other is always going to be less striking than one which remains rooted…
Fiction Review: Tara Van De Mark Reads Amy Stuber’s Collection Sad Grownups

At a time when many of us are feeling low, Amy Stuber’s debut story collection, Sad Grownups, accepts this truth and, in doing so, helps reorient us to something like a middle ground. The stories embrace the rawness of life, its trauma, failure, despondency, grief, how our hurt little kid selves never really leave us, and…
Fiction Review: Elizabeth H. Winkler Reads Jen Michalski’s Novel All This Can Be True

If you begin Jen Michalski’s All This Can Be True on the bus, you’ll almost certainly miss your stop. Written in alternating points of view, the book is as much a story of self discovery and queer coming-of-age as it is a story of love, and Michalski tells it well. Our protagonists are Lacie Johnson…
Poetry Review: Jen Schneider Reads Elizabeth Galoozis’ Collection Law of the Letter

What happens when you combine the literary prowess of a skillful and soulful poet-librarian like Elizabeth Galoozis with the space to reorder understanding, instill voice in silenced letters, expand contractions into new shapes, and infuse original meaning into common language? As Law of the Letter illustrates, there’s the possibility of magic—magic in the form of…
Fiction Review: Emily Hall Reads Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross’ Collection Don’t Take This the Wrong Way

In Kim Magowan & Michelle Ross’ short story collection Don’t Take This the Wrong Way characters teeter on the edge of an epiphany. But they stumble before they can access any greater understanding of their lives. Some stories feature parents who can’t connect to their children, refusing to see how their own behavior is alienating.…