Tag: Erin Flanagan

Blackout, nonfiction by Sarah Hepola, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Blackout follows Sarah Hepola’s life as a drinker, starting with sips in grade school and progressing through her first drunk in junior high, which was followed by many, many more in high school, college, and beyond. This well-written and engaging memoir will appeal to all readers of nonfiction, particularly those interested in addiction narratives, and…
There’s Something I Want You to Do, stories by Charles Baxter, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

The epigraph from Primo Levi’s The Reawakening sets the stage for Baxter’s latest collection: “Everybody’s moral universe, suitably interpreted, comes to be identified with the sum of his former experiences, and so represents an abridged form of his biography.” These stories, or “biographies,” pack depth and distance so that they become an accumulation of moments…
Get in Trouble, stories by Kelly Link, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Kelly Link’s fiction follows the same kind of logic that lets you coast through a dream where your partner is played by your tenth-grade math teacher and you’re wearing roller skates, yet there doesn’t seem anything weird about it. In Link’s stories, mermaids are an invasive species, the job of superhero sidekick includes a lot…
Almost Famous Women, short stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

In her second story collection, Almost Famous Women, Megan Mayhew Bergman delves into the lives of real women who skirted the fringes of fame, feminism, femininity, and polite society, looking at the ripple effects of both the choices they made and the ones that were made for them. Conjoined twins, a self-destructive painter, the illegitimate…
Faulty Predictions, stories by Karin Lin-Greenberg, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Karin Lin-Greenberg’s collection, Faulty Predictions, winner of the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, wonderfully captures the moments when characters begin to see beyond their preconceptions into a fuller view of their lives and others’. The moments themselves are both large and small—ranging from a high school student’s suicide to a sister and brother’s…
The Year of Perfect Happiness, stories by Becky Adnot-Haynes, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

In this collection, winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, Adnot-Haynes mines the iffy world of early adulthood, where the players are constantly looking over their shoulders, about to be found out as imposters. The things they’re supposed to want—babies, mortgages, and stable, healthy relationships—aren’t what they really want at all, and…
Leaving the Pink House, a memoir by Ladette Randolph, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Ladette Randolph’s memoir tells of how she and her husband purchase a Nebraska farmhouse the day after 9/11 and spend the next eleven months renovating against the ticking clock of a bridge loan. It would be too pat to say they’re building their dream house; Randolph already lives in a home she loves. Instead this…
By Light We Knew Our Names, stories by Anne Valente, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Anne Valente’s first collection, By Light We Knew Our Names, offers up thirteen unique stories dealing with the difficult transitions from childhood to adulthood, the mystery of connection, the hardships of loss, and the crystalized moments when wonder is either abandoned or embraced. Many of the stories contain magical elements and could be classified as…
Last Word, a novella by Jonathan Blum, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Set against the backdrop of changing technologies, cyber-bullying, and blended families, Jonathan Blum’s novella Last Word tells of Kip Langer and his son, Eric, as Kip attempts to understand a boy connected to him by blood and little else. Facing both a civil liberty negligence suit and his thirteen-year-old son’s expulsion from his Jewish middle…