Connie Porter's first fiction is more a collection of related stories than a novel, and will seem like old material to readers who only glance at the jacket copy. The book is a tale of a black family living in the urban North and, because of its structure, is from a woman's perspective. But Porter's…
There are many reasons to praise this extraordinary book by the Chinese poet Ha Jin. Among the poets of his generation, who came of age in the crucible of the Cultural Revolution, he is, I believe, the first to publish a collection not translated, but written in American English — spare, clear, unadorned. The poet,…
One of the things the novel can and often does do for its readers is to extend their range of sympathy, to make them see with a new clarity groups of people that might otherwise be forgotten except in statistical charts, and to make them feel that the individuals inside these groups partake of our…
M. F. Beal's long visionary story "Gold" was featured in the New American Review in 1971. That piece, along with others in earlier issues of NAR, the Atlantic, and the Paris Review, earned for her a considerable reputation, including mention in Gravity's Rainbow. Amazon One is Beal's first published novel, and will, it is to…
James Alan McPherson recommends Billy Verité, a novel by Rick Harsch: “A portrait of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the human condition, in late twentieth-century America, from an absolutely original point of view.” (Steerforth)
Gary Soto recommends Calle 10,a first novel by Danny Romero: ” Calle 10is a novel of Chicano lowlife in Oakland. The main character is a dude named Zero, his name summarizing what this novel is all about. The writing is gritty. If you like chewing on the salty rocks of hard living, this is for…
For sheer corporeal presence in verse, it would be hard to match Alice Mattison. Her best subject is motherhood, including pregnancy (no need to say " enceinte" in this case). No subject holds more boredom or fascination for us. As Adrienne Rich has noted, we tend either to make too much or too little of…
David Gullette recommends Bite Every Sorrow, poems by Barbara Ras: “Barbara Ras has written a dazzling first book of poems-C. K. Williams’s choice for this year’s Walt Whitman Award. She favors long, opulent, clever lines, as when she falls for a man in Central America: ‘I loved the gesture for wait, two hands pumping the…
Camellia Street A novel by Mercè Rodoreda, translated by David H. Rosenthal. Graywolf Press, $20.00 cloth. Reviewed by James Carroll. “They abandoned me on Camellia Street, in front of a garden gate, and the night watchman found me early the next morning.” So begins Camellia Street, a small masterpiece of fiction by Mercè Rodoreda, the…
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