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The protagonist in D. Foy’s second novel is that angry young kid whose pain and shame he cannot express except in strange orthogonal ways, ways that will only deepen his pain and shame, not alleviate them. But Foy allows us inside that boy’s beleaguered brain box and we feel every horrible sensation he is prone to…
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Angela Duckworth Scribner, May 2016 354 pp, $28 Buy: hardcover | eBook Reviewed by Aaron Sommers There’s a new teacher’s pet in class. It’s not the newest, most scientific standardized test to measure student achievement. It has nothing to do with the allure of technology in classrooms,…
One of the pivotal moments in my writing career happened back in the early ’90s when I read Margot Livesey’s debut novel Homework. I was really struck by the unsettling tone of the book and by Jenny, the daughter of the hero’s–Celia’s–boyfriend, a seemingly awful little girl who tries to drive Celia from the house.
Through the detritus of the Qaddafi regime’s collapse, Matar digs with a singular purpose: to return to his homeland and find any answers to the ultimate fate of his father.
In this fantastic collection what is evident from the get-go is that the speaker is most definitely a daughter. She is also a wife, a mother, a woman of the deep heart and spirit. Reckless? No. Or, yes, if the heart is a reckless landscape of emotive temperaments, shifts, mannerisms, funky phantoms of hipness and insight, then, yes, reckless.
As Yune crafts a story of family ties and gently illustrates the breakdown of said family, his characters come to life through dry wit, keen observation and just enough boob jokes to make readers truly feel like they’re spending time with men in their twenties.
The shorts are wide-ranging. Some are heartbreaking in less than 500 words; others are unexpectedly hilarious whether outright or with a darker flavor to their humor. Disorders is a contemporary stable of parables not only about fathers and sons, but about the everyday struggle to live one’s life in another’s shadow and about the failure to meet another’s expectations.
The waning months of President Obama’s presidency coupled with the populist ascendancy of Donald Trump has seemingly expedited feelings of fear, loathing, and endless uncertainty among many. To some, Obama’s ascendancy was supposed to usher in a post-racial democracy that would rescue, resuscitate, and render the American dream (or pieces of it, at least) reachable to the average American citizen. Unfortunately, Trump’s nativist rhetoric and crypto-fascism synched with the durability of racism, generational poverty, and American empire-building has imposed newer and more serious life-challenges into the lives of Black Americans and poor and working class people from all walks of life.
Those in the business of National Security classify diarrhea as a clear and present danger. It’s particularly hazardous for members of the U.S. Special forces, because diarrhea is an enemy from within that can attack without warning. I know this because I’ve read Mary Roach’s GRUNT: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE OF HUMANS AT WAR, specifically, chapter eight (“Leaky SEALs”).
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