Navigating Identity Across Continents in Vanessa A. Bee’s Home Bound
Vanessa A. Bee’s new memoir is story of an ambitious and bright young woman doing her best to navigate a complicated transcontinental existence.
Book Reviews
Disappearing Bodies in Elizabeth McCracken’s The Hero of This Book
To be visible or invisible in the public eye, the novel implies, is not a choice one makes. Readers who delight in forthright and fearless stories of complicated women, told through the eyes of other complicated women, are sure to find joy in McCracken’s new novel.
Literature and its Manipulations in The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li’s new book is a taut landscape built of all literature’s attachments, manipulations, displacements, anxieties, and escapes. It is the labored breadth of an economy that is resplendently libidinal and compelling.
Time, Sin, and Wonder in Elisa Gabbert’s Normal Distance
In Elisa Gabbert’s new poetry collection, the opening and turning outward to the largest questions we can ask—time, the afterlife—remind us of all we do not know. In our shared ignorance, Gabbert stokes a sense of wonder.
Myths and Mundanity in Jill Bialosky’s The Deceptions
Perhaps the greatest achievement of Jill Bialosky’s novel is its captivating depiction of mundane reality.
The Suburban Microcosms of The Hundred Waters
Lauren Acampora’s novel is a fast read that moves ever faster the deeper Louisa and Sylvie head down their suburban rabbit hole.
Sensory Experiences in Nina Mingya Powles’s Magnolia木蘭
Nina Mingya Powles’s newest collection is a sensory feast. Inviting readers into the spaces between language and culture, between country of birth and countries of origin, Powles paints the landscapes and histories that have shaped her.
Midwood’s Elevated Vantages
There’s a special delight in Jana Prikryl’s concentration about what is outside her window, the changes from season to season, the repetitions, and what is rooted and roots us, if we allow it to do so. It’s both a poetic act, and a necessary one, especially in our fragmented times.
Young Love and Frenzied Obsession in Andrea Abreu’s Dogs of Summer
In her debut novel, translated by Julia Sanches, Andrea Abreu writes a rapturous story about obsessive friendship, in the process providing an authentically complex portrayal of the desire of girls.