Giacomo Sartori’s ‘Bug’ Melds Whimsy and Substance
Sartori's Bug is a study in quirkiness, but it is founded upon a serious and complex substratum.
fiction
The Guilty Pleasure of Summers’ Monstrous ‘A Certain Hunger’
Easy to summarize but difficult to, um, flesh out, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger is, without a doubt, the Great American Female Serial Killer Novel, The Great Gatsby of women cannibal foodie satirical black comic memoirs.
Why Racially Diverse British Period Dramas Matter
To this day, the history of people of color in England is often erased from dominant cultural narratives. Fictions, however, can collectively shift cultural narratives; we need stories to counter stories.
Warren Read’s ‘One Simple Thing’ Is Hardly So Simple
Tension is inescapable in Warren Read's story about a need to escape, One Simple Thing.
In Author Dennis E. Staples’ Town, Sleeping Dogs Don’t Lie
In Dennis E. Staples' remarkable debut, This Town Sleeps, flawed mothers and sons must pacify vengeful ghosts and family curses. As if loving each other wasn't hard enough.
‘A World Between’ Is a Lesbian Love Story for Modern Times
Debut novel A World Between explores the messy relationship dynamics that both bolster and challenge our emotional bonds with the ones we love.
Jenny Hval’s ‘Girls Against God’ Is Pure Audacity
With Girls Against God, avant-garde musician Jenny Hval gives us a semi-autobiographical text that, like the metalhead teen she describes, won't abide by any rules.
Is Carl Neville’s ‘Eminent Domain’ Worth the Effort?
In Carl Neville's latest novel, Eminent Domain, he creates complexities and then shatters them into tiny narrative bits arrayed along a non-linear timeline.
Oscar Hijuelos’ ‘Mambo Kings Play the Songs of Love’ Dances On
Oscar Hijuelos' dizzyingly ambitious foot-tapping family epic, Mambo Kings Play the Songs of Love, opened the door for Latinx writers to tell their stories in all their richness.
Vigdis Hjorth’s ‘Long Live the Post Horn!’ Breathes Life into Bureaucratic Anxiety
Vigdis Hjorth's Long Live the Post Horn! is a study in existential torpor that, happily, does not induce the same condition in the reader.