Austin Price

Critical Shortcomings in Cynthia Ozick’s ‘Critics, Monsters, Fanatics & Other Literary Essays’

/ 7 December 2016

It's so easy to be distracted by the powerful writing and insightful analysis that one misses Ozick's inability to deliver on the larger thematic promises of her latest collection.

Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews

The Valley Unpleasant in ‘Mount Pleasant’

Austin Price

/ 7 September 2016

Ruined by blind ambition, Mount Pleasant stands as a cautionary tale to any writer possessed of more aspiration than art.

Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews

If Only ‘Everything Is Teeth’ Had Avoided the Grinding

Austin Price

/ 30 June 2016

It's as though Wyld is, ironically, scared of writing a story willing to give fear its due.

Books/Culture/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/PopMatters Picks

‘Til Human Faces Wake Us: Don DeLillo’s ‘Zero K’

Austin Price

/ 20 May 2016

Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews

‘The Regional Office is Under Attack’ Suffers an Identity Crisis

Austin Price

/ 4 May 2016

There's something ugly at the heart of this story of superheroics, something that utterly conflicts with the book's sometimes better nature.

Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews

The Empty Apocalypse of Style

Austin Price

/ 16 March 2016

Muslim's short story collection, Age of Blight, is conceptually interesting but stylistically and thematically shallow.

Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews

‘Hurt People’, Fractured Book

Austin Price

/ 7 March 2016

There are sinister elements at work in Cote Smith's debut novel that mark it as an honest horror story of the best kind. If only they didn't also compromise it so fundamentally.

Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/PopMatters Picks/Reviews

On the Meaningful Nonsense in ‘Jottings From a Far Away Place’

Austin Price

/ 4 February 2016

Formally inventive, beautifully written and thematically dense, Brendan Connell's latest collection is a multi-layered anthology that compels multiple readings.

Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews

The Eternally Recurrent Themes in Susan Barker’s ‘The Incarnations’

Austin Price

/ 2 December 2015

The Incarnations works perfectly as a collection of studied, precise short stories unified by simple but powerful themes and a bevy of stylistic strengths.

Books/Featured: Top of Home Page/Reviews

Reality Itself Is Malevolent in Thomas Ligotti’s Work

Austin Price

/ 16 November 2015

Ligotti's stories seem almost violently unpalatable. They afford neither easy resolutions nor the seemingly ambiguous but ultimately fulfilling pleasures of so many mystery stories.