Review: DEAR CYBORGS by Eugene Lim
For Frank Exit, a man tasked with recovering the kidnapped children of a Japanese diplomat, gone are the days of a simple ransom request for money or a getaway vehicle.
Author: Amelia Hassani
Review: THE WAKE by Paul Kingsnorth
The Wake Paul Kingsnorth Graywolf, Sept 2015 365pp, $16 Buy: paperback Much has been made of Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake, crowdfunded to publication in England last spring and longlisted for the Man Booker Award. Set during and after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, The Wake follows a free farmer from the Lancashire fens…
Review: YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE by Alexandra Kleeman
YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE Alexandra Kleeman Harper, August 2015 283 pp, $25.99 Buy hardcover | eBook | trade paperback | audio Seeming unmoored from both tangible responsibility and abstract constructs, like Mersualt in Camus’ The Stranger, “A”—the narrator of Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine—drifts…
Review: THE CITY AT THREE PM: WRITING, READING, AND TRAVELING by Peter LaSalle
The City at Three PM: Writing, Reading, and Traveling Peter LaSalle Dzanc Books, December 15 2015 280 pp; $15.95 Buy paperback We read travel writers for a variety of reasons, but often it is for the vicarious thrill of the journey, somewhat akin to schadenfreude in that we can happily wince at a traveler’s discomforts…
Review: WHAT’S THE STORY by Sydney Lea
WHAT’S THE STORY Sydney Lea, Essays Green Writer’s Press, Nov 2015 224 pp; $19.95 Buy: paperback Now in his 70s, Vermont Poet Laureate and founder of New England Review Sydney Lea presents in this collection nearly seventy lyrical meditations in prose on what he calls the biggest surprise of his life, “turning into an elderly man.”…
Review: Marcel Proust’s IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME: SWANN’S WAY – A Graphic Novel by Stéphane Heuet
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME: SWANN’S WAY by Marcel Proust Adaptation & Drawings by Stéphane Heuet Translated by Arthur Goldhammer Liveright, English reprint ed. July 2015 240 pp, $26.95 Buy hardcover | eBook There are few challenges as alluringly counterintuitive as adapting Proust; attempts to do so have produced wildly varying results in a surprising array of…
Review: JUVENTUD by Vanessa Blakeslee
Juventud Vanessa Blakeslee Curbside Splendor Publishing, October 2015 340 pp, $15.95 Buy paperback | eBook Blame radiates outward from the center of Vanessa Blakeslee’s new novel, Juventud, which begins in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, during the conflict between FARC and ELN in 1999. First-person narrator fifteen-year-old Mercedes Martinez blames her drug-trafficking father, Diego, for the…
Review: THE STATE WE’RE IN: MAINE STORIES by Ann Beattie
THE STATE WE’RE IN: MAINE STORIES Ann Beattie Scribner, Aug 2015 224 pages $25 buy: hardcover | eBook Maine, for Ann Beattie in her new collection, is a state of life, and that is the beautiful trick of the title, The State We’re In: Maine Stories. It is both the state, as in the location,…
Review: NOTHING LOOKS FAMILIAR by Shawn Syms
NOTHING LOOKS FAMILIAR Shawn Syms Arsenal Pulp Press Published in Canada September 2014; available elsewhere since May 2015 184 pages $15.95 Buy paperback | NOOK | Kindle Complex characters are damn hard to write. Perhaps this explains why contemporary fiction is full of characters designed to be relatable and easily digestible. These sort of characters act as mere…