Category: Reviews & Criticism

Fiction Review: Giano Cromley Reads The Glamshack by Paul Cohen

I fear the praise I want to give Paul Cohen’s debut novel The Glamshack might end up hurting its sales. To say The Glamshack is unlike any novel I’ve read in a long time is not the kind of compliment that causes a book to shoot up bestseller lists. To say it challenges the reader at every turn, as it follows…
“Charting the Depths of Absurdity”: Miranda Schmidt on Reading Annie Hartnett’s Rabbit Cake

The very nature of death is absurd. The notion that a person can cease to exist, here in one moment and gone in the next, creates a strong sense of dissonance that, especially in those first minutes of grieving, makes the world feel surreal. Directly after my mom died, I couldn’t find my way out…
Poetry Review: Chris Muravez Reads Ears by Jared Stanley

I guess I should begin this review with a kind of caveat. I love Jared Stanley. He was one of my poetry professors at Sierra Nevada College, he was my project advisor, and he guided me into the poetry community with friendship and grace. It is safe to say that I would not be who…
“We Were Happy, Until We Were Told We Could Be Happier”: Linda Michel-Cassidy Reads Sarah Gerard’s Sunshine State

Counter to familiar ideas of Florida: spring break, the spectacle that is South Beach, and golfing old-timers, in Sunshine State, Sarah Gerard offers periphery, rather than underbelly or façade. Gerard, a Florida native with a fascinating past, examines the cultural phenomena that shaped her family’s story. She writes with insight and empathy, never once disparaging…
Nonfiction Review: Jackson Nieuwland on The Sky Isn’t Blue by Janice Lee

I used to annoy my sister by insisting that the sky was white and the clouds were blue. It annoyed her because she knew the sky was blue, everyone knows the sky is blue, even if you’re blind you know it. If she hadn’t been so certain, she wouldn’t have been annoyed. If she hadn’t…
“Velvet & Paint”: Rachel Sharp Reviews Tara Deal’s That Night Alive

In Tara Deal’s That Night Alive, a young crypto-reporter pulls us backward through her life as a writer by way of her sporadic, journal-like entries. We begin on the eve of her predetermined death date—due to an unnamed disease—on which her final moments are being spent under the warmth of a velvet blanket, looking out…
Review: Jacob Singer on Michael Helm’s Novel After James

“The story seemed to confirm the existence of a thing not yet named, like an invisible planet postulated through math, the evidence of bending light, gravitational forces.” The pleasure of Michael Helm’s After James stems from how theory works in modern science. Currently, scientists don’t have to see to believe. Einstein couldn’t test his theories…
Luke Jeffrey Reviews Matthew Burnside’s Short Story Collection Postludes

The hero is too late. The dragon is unstoppable, and the princess has died prematurely. Must the story end there? Could there be a hint of redemption in the years to come, when the hero finally comes to terms with his guilt and grief? Matthew Burnside explores what happens after life falls apart in Postludes,…
Dust Bunny City, prose poems by Bud Smith, reviewed by Michael Gillan Maxwell

Dust Bunny City, Bud Smith’s latest collection of prose poems, is a wonderful collaboration with his wife, Rae Buleri, who illustrated the book. Organized in two sections, Tic Tac Toe and Orange Peel, the pieces unfold in a deliberate story arc sequenced like songs on a vinyl album. An album you’d flip over and listen…