Category: Reviews & Criticism
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Ragged; or, The Loveliest Lies of All, an anthropomorphic crime novel by Christopher Irvin, reviewed by Robert Young
Going into this book, I didn’t really know what to expect. I wasn’t familiar with the author’s other works, so what attracted me to this book was the premise alone: a feral twist on crime fiction, as the book’s back blurb informed me. I was intrigued. My interests were thoroughly piqued. I read onward. A…
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Warewolff!, an archive by Gary J. Shipley, reviewed by Sean Oscar
I had to read Warewolff! in bursts. I found that sitting down with it for too long left me feeling hollowed out. Shipley is a skillful engineer of abominations, and there is certainly something rewarding in following the paths he sets before the reader, but be warned—this is an intense and difficult book which will…
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Future Home of the Living God, a novel by Louise Erdrich, reviewed by Sarah Elsasser
I was surprised to hear that Louise Erdrich has a forthcoming novel and was even more surprised when I was handed the book; the image chosen for the cover a grainy, technologically cold image of an ultrasound with the overlaid title: Future Home of the Living God. A prolific writer—this is Erdrich’s twenty-first novel, in…
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The Walmart Book of the Dead, a spellbook by Lucy Biederman, reviewed by James Ardis
When I turned sixteen, I started working as a stocker and cart pusher at my mother’s Walmart Neighborhood Market. She joined Walmart when I was twelve years old, a single mother trying to keep up with the skyrocketing rent in our Texas suburb. On morning shifts, my mom and I even worked together, scanning in…
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Rooted, the best new arboreal nonfiction edited by Josh MacIvor-Andersen, reviewed by Miranda Schmidt
Recently, Portland, my home, was covered in a layer of ash and smoke from nearby wildfires in the forested Columbia Gorge. Wildfires are common in the west but this year’s intensely hot and dry summer has created conditions that mean, as we inched towards fall, it felt as if the whole of the west coast…
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We Could’ve Been Happy Here, debut story collection by Keith Lesmeister, reviewed by Ray Barker
The characters in Keith Lesmeister’s debut short story collection, We Could’ve Been Happy Here, are populated with men stuck in the painful middle-distance of life, haunting the rural and lonely locales of the Midwest, the Iowa small towns serving as a microcosm of their weary worldview. The parameters of the physical geography are clear: fading…
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Flowers & Sky, lectures and unpublished poems by Aaron Shurin, reviewed by Daniel Casey
Every poet is unconsciously dominated by particularities. There is a moment in the writing life of most when they come to realize not just their habits or style but also obsessions and predilections. It is a moment when a writer sees their work from the outside. Often, this will lead to self-imitation or, to put…
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The Hour of Daydreams, a novel by Renee Macalino Rutledge, reviewed by Melissa McDaniel
No matter how well we think we know someone, it is never truly possible to fully understand another person. Within the complex maze of the human soul, there will always be unknown corners and hidden chambers. In The Hour of Daydreams, Renee Macalino Rutledge examines this struggle between intimacy and closeness through a lens of…
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Review by Joe Sacksteder: Mount Fugue, a hybrid novel by JI Daniels
As a pianist who has played many a fugue in my time, I’m sometimes annoyed at the default the corollary many critiques draw between difficult works of literature and the fugue. The “Sirens” chapter of Ulysses, for example, is not fugal. It’s more of a bloated overture with the opening section representing the instrumentalists warming…
Heavy Feather Review 