Breathe Something Nice Stories by Emily Hammond. Univ. of Nevada, $13.00 paper. Reviewed by Fred Leebron. There are no quiet stories in Breathe Something Nice, Emily Hammond’s first collection of fiction. In a series of ambitious evocations, Hammond demonstrates fresh wit and a fine irony. Most remarkable, though, is her willingness to keep opening up…
M. L. Rosenthal recommends Complete Poems, a collection by Kenneth Fearing (National Poetry Foundation): “It’s a special joy to have the work of this wry, sardonic, thoroughly alive Catullus of the American Depression once more in print. (Edward Dahlberg compared him with Corbière-and that was true, too.)”
Philip Levine recommends Believers, stories and a novella by Charles Baxter: “This is a superb collection; the stories are unusually daring and imaginative-‘Time Exposure’ and ‘The Lures for Love’ are two not to be forgotten. The novella ‘Believers’ demonstrates an extraordinary ability to deal with and invoke a past era and to show how sex,…
Robert Boswell recommends Breathe Something Nice, stories by Emily Hammond: “This is an extraordinary collection of stories-beautifully written, artfully crafted, and utterly haunting. It should be required reading in every workshop in the country.” Reviewed in “Bookshelf” on page 229. (Nevada)
Maura Stanton recommends Crazy Woman, a novel by Kate Horsley (Ballantine): “This first novel is an imaginative tour de force. By using the form of a ‘captivity narrative,’ Horsley incorporates surreal events successfully into a realistic narrative. The result is dazzling language and vivid characters.”
Beloved Infidel Poems by Dean Young. Wesleyan University Press, $10.95 paper. Reviewed by Diann Blakely Shoaf. In “The Hive,” as in many other of the very fine poems in Dean Young’s second collection, Beloved Infidel, the slightly cracked and wavy but nonetheless serviceable mirror of contemporary language is held up to our lives, to the…
By now, many people have heard of the 1986 accident that led to the amputation of writer Andre Dubus's left leg and cost him the use of his right one. Driving home, Dubus stopped to aid two motorists, a brother and sister. An oncoming car hit Dubus and the brother, killing the young man, but…
Maura Stanton recommends Crossing, a first novel by Manuel Luis Martinez: “A powerful first-person narrative, based on a true incident, about a sixteen-year-old boy trying to cross the Mexican/Texas border in a sweltering railroad boxcar with twelve older desperate men.” (Bilingual)
All-American Girl Poems by Robin Becker. Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, $10.95 paper. Reviewed by Joyce Peseroff. Gathered at the edge of each poem in Robin Becker’s moving fourth collection, palpable and terrible, wait the forces of chaos. Love affairs end, families dissolve, the kingdoms of childhood are lost. All-American Girl, despite its insouciant title, is…
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