Category: Reviews & Criticism

Daniel Falatko’s Condominium Blog Tour: Top Five

It probably says a lot about Condominium that none of the top five songs looming over the plot are by bands that ever existed. Whether this is an indicator of good things about the novel (“A cutting, surreal satire!”) or negative aspects (“What the hell is this thing even about?”) is up in the air,…
Graphic Novel Review: Ryan Werner Reads The Well-Dressed Bear Will (Never) Be Found by J. Roselló

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. The titular Well-Dressed Bear of J. Roselló’s The Well-Dressed Bear Will (Never) Be Found doesn’t seem to ever finish reading his copy of Italo Calvino’s if on a winter’s night a traveler. I myself read it almost a decade ago and remember almost nothing of it: ten…
Book Review: John Vanderslice on Ben Tanzer’s Story Collection Sex and Death

With a title as provocatively Freudian as Sex and Death, a reader might expect a book of stories that never ends, or one that encapsulates the life of every person who has ever existed on the planet. Well, a concise, easily portable collection like this one (a mere seventy-two pages long) from Ben Tanzer is…
Waste, a novel by Andrew F. Sullivan, reviewed by Robyn Ringler

Waste is a rapid-action unconventional novel that takes place over two days in 1989 in the fictional and economically dying town of Larkhill in southern Ontario, Canada. Larkhill is lined by porn stores, discount tax offices, and apartments patched with plywood windows. The twelve manufacturing plants that used to provide jobs are now gray lots…
Fiction Review: Mindy Hartings Reads Gisele Firmino’s The Marble Army

Brazil and America might appear to have many differences—language, development, and location. However, at one time, America and Brazil were both colonies fighting off the suppressor to gain freedom of speech and assembly. The Marble Army by Gisele Firmino eliminates all predisposed differences, so the reader can relate to these characters from across the globe…
United States of Japan, a novel by Peter Tieryas, reviewed by Nick Sweeney

We owe Philip K. Dick a lot. With every sentence he wrote, Dick helped many writers and readers break through the doors of imagination and ask “what if?” He made us think, and he sparked a new generation of writers to jump high, write fast, and explain things later. Dick, in many ways, has influenced…
Nothing but the Dead and Dying, stories by Ryan W. Bradley, reviewed by Leland Cheuk

The title of Ryan W. Bradley’s eighth book, Nothing but the Dead and Dying, pulls no punches. Set in Alaska, these two-dozen stories are about a dead and dying part of the world, thanks to climate change, and the dead and dying white working class men that have become a media talking point in this…
Fiction Review: Stephanie Marker on Emily Capettini’s Thistle: Ghosts, Memories, & Ashes

Within the language of Emily Capettini’s work, there exists a subtle sense of gentle quiet that allows the reader to sink into it, to ruminate over the delicate nature of each sentence as it works to connect one moment to the next. There is a calmness, even in anger, even in chaos, that seeps tenderly…
Nonfiction Review: Amy Long Reads Pretentiousness: Why It Matters by Dan Fox

In a recent think piece on the Vice-owned music site Noisey, music journalist Dan Ozzi asks “Is the Album Review Dead?” In it, music journalist Dan Ozzi argues that, as print media has declined in prominence and even taste-making websites like Pitchfork have lost their gatekeeper status, screaming “amateurs” on Twitter have replaced the professional…