Category

book reviews

Landon Houle's Living Things

November 13, 2019 | blog, book reviews

By Matt Manco Living ThingsBy Landon Houle232 pp. Red Hen Press. $16.95 Black Creek, South Carolina, its residents believe, is the type of town people come to because bad things don’t happen there. But when a young woman is found dead in the creek, that belief is challenged. Landon Houle’s debut novel, Living Things, guides...

The Moment, the Memory: Review of Alison Rollins's "Library of Small Catastrophes"

October 29, 2019 | blog, book reviews

By Dakota Reed Library of Small CatastrophesBy Alison C. Rollins93 pp. Copper Canyon Press. $16.00 Alison Rollins’s debut collection of poetry serves as a sharp examination of womanhood and blackness, one that deals with such complex and multi-faceted components by inviting you into the figurative library she has created within her poems. Readers are granted...

New Wave, New Girl: A Review of "Sea Monsters" by Chloe Aridjis

October 22, 2019 | blog, book reviews

By Ren Jones Sea MonstersBy Chloe Aridjis130 pp. Catapult. $23.00 Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis is, above all else, a tale of teenage disillusionment. With its plot woven between a New Wave rendition of Mexico City and the mythically charged seaside town of Zipolite, Sea Monsters follows Luisa—a seventeen-year-old girl whose personality exudes a Siouxsie...

Navigating Reality: Review of Molly Reid’s "The Rapture Index: A Suburban Bestiary"

September 24, 2019 | blog, book reviews

By Grace Timko The Rapture Index: A Suburban BestiaryBy Molly Reid220 pp. BOA Editions. $17.00 The stories in Molly Reid’s debut collection, The Rapture Index: A Suburban Bestiary, resonate with readers through an overarching sense of nostalgia and moments of discomfort. Reid has the distinct ability to navigate dualities—the real and fabulist—both in theme and in style....

The Fearful Beauty of 'Anything': Review of Lee Martin's "The Mutual UFO Network"

November 29, 2018 | blog, book reviews

By Emma Stough The Mutual UFO NetworkBy Lee Martin300 pp. Dzanc Books. $26.95 The legion of characters populating Lee Martin’s forthcoming collection The Mutual UFO Network cause a reader to question humanity’s place among the stars and planets. Martin favors the wanderers—those navigating the untidy shambles of lost love, of families cracked and broken apart, of past and...

Unguided Girlhood: A Review of "The Blurry Years" by Eleanor Kriseman

October 23, 2018 | blog, book reviews

By Christine McSwain The Blurry YearsBy Eleanor Kriseman160 pp. Two Dollar Radio, $15.99 In The Blurry Years, Eleanor Kriseman depicts the particularly tumultuous but ultimately universal growing pains of Callie, a bright young girl living in Florida with her flighty, alcoholic mother. Against a rotating backdrop of run-down motel rooms, the homes of short-term boyfriends,...

Piecing it Together: Review of "Because: A Lyric Memoir" by Joshua Mensch

September 18, 2018 | book reviews, news

By John L. Byrne Because: A Lyric Memoir By Joshua Mensch 144 pp. W.W. Norton & Company, $22.95 At once a personal account of actual events and a lyric journey through the formative years of a young boy, Joshua Mensch’s lyric memoir, Because, unfolds a tale about the impact of childhood sexual and psychological abuse....