Book Review: The Complicities by Stacey D’Erasmo
How and where do you draw the line between self-deception and lying?
Book Reviews
Reviews of books and other forms of literature
Book Review: How to Adjust to the Dark by Rebecca van Laer
How does one adjust to the dark? How does a poet remain a poet? If one isn’t actively producing and publishing, are they truly a poet?
With the Help of Leigh Chadwick, I Review Robert Vaughan’s Askew
Robert Vaughan’s Askew is a collection built from a heart that knows why it beats.
Meaning’s Music: A Review of William H. Gass’s Middle C
Gass’s new novel, Middle C, is likely to strike most readers as less dependent on language games, but such an impression would ultimately be only superficial.
Aaron Burr: Good Father, Good Shot
Book review: H.W. Brands's The Heartbreak of Aaron Burr lays out the details of Burr’s lifetime in short, swiftly moving chapters.
Why George Saunders Needs to Stop Repeating Himself
A major risk for any author—especially one whose main theme involves human consciousness—is overusing certain techniques and letting the voices of characters overlap and repeat.
Review: How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by Christopher Boucher
Of all the preposterous faux vehicle manuals out there, Christopher Boucher’s How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive has to be the most ridiculous.
A Dreamy Look: A Review of Diane Williams’s Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty
If flash fiction appeals to a new, attenuated attention span among some readers, Diane Williams's stories reward expanded attention and encourage rereading.
What Becomes by A.L. Kennedy
The stories in A.L. Kennedy’s What Becomes seem driven by two entities: the author’s brain and her prose appendage. The latter is so alive it appears to possess a separate language pulse. In heightened moments Kennedy uses language to bind thought to physical sensation, which in turn stimulates a replicated response in the brain of the reader. This simulated experience is what makes her stories so striking and also intense.
The Inclusive Embrace: Why Translation Matters by Edith Grossman
In an occasionally polemical and highly impassioned voice, Edith Grossman advances the most brilliant and persuasive arguments for the absolute importance of literary translation I have ever encountered.