Beatrice and Croc HarryLawrence HillHarper Collins, 2022 Review by Edie Reaney Chunn Palaver Bumfuzzled Honey bucket What do these words have in common? Each of them is in The Saint Lawrence Dictionary of Only the Best Words, Real and...
Quiet Night ThinkGillian SzeECW Press, 2022 Review by Rebecca Mangra “What emerges from long looking?” Gillian Sze, in her new book Quiet Night Think, asks readers the question in one of her essays. Long looking requires held attention to...
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st CenturyKim FuCoach House Books, 2022 Review by Simon Lowe Canadian author Kim Fu’s timely, genre-exploiting collection of short stories, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, is a weird, mind blowing examination of...
Find a Place for MeDeirdre FaganRegal House Publishing, 2022 Review by Diane Gottlieb “I have ALS.” These are the words Deirdre Fagan’s forty-three year-old husband spoke just days after Christmas 2011. Bob, the father of their children (who were...
The Scent of LightKristjana GunnarsCoach House Books, 2022 Review by Kris Rothstein This winter, the term “autofiction” followed me around until I felt the need to investigate further. At its most obvious it is autobiographical fiction—but just below the...
Chemical ValleyDavid HuebertBiblioasis, 2021 Review by Peter Szuban “What you might find, if you were handling a dead pigeon, is something unexpected in the glassy cosmos of its eye: a dark beauty, a molten alchemy.” The characters in David...
PhototaxisOlivia TapieroTranslated by Kit SchluterNightboat Books, 2021 Review by Marisa Grizenko Olivia Tapiero’s Phototaxis, translated from French by Kit Schluter, opens in a world we can recognize. The incomprehensible has happened, and happened again, yet people continue living their...
Blue-Skinned GodsS.J. SinduSoho Press, 2021 Review by Marcie McCauley In Blue-Skinned Gods, S.J. Sindu presents a narrative designed to challenge readers’ understanding of truth and trust, belonging and belief. “I had hoped for a story,” Kalki muses, but “instead...
Made-Up: A True Story of Beauty Culture Under Late Capitalism Daphné B. Translated by Alex ManleyCoach House Books, 2021 Review by Alanna Why When you think of make-up, do you think of a frivolous activity or a form of self-care? For...