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The Cottagers, a novel by Marshall N. Klimasewiski (Norton): This arresting first book explores the mysterious and envious nature of the friendship between two couples on vacation at the Vancouver Island resort town of East Sooke. Thrown into this catastrophic mix is nineteen-year-old Cyrus Collingswood, a potential genius who just might have a tendency toward…
Madeline DeFrees recommends Dark Alphabet, poems by Jennifer Maier: "Jennifer Maier’s colloquial language settles you comfortably into the passenger seat for a journey full of surprising turns. The poems are triggered by ordinary events: a friend’s asking why she doesn’t write novels; the sight of ducks in mating season. This first collection is a sophisticated…
Permanent Visitors, stories by Kevin Moffett (Iowa): In this funny and acutely perceptive debut collection, Moffett has an eye for the tragic that is also comic: a mother’s unexpected death from a bad oyster is followed by the widower’s hosting of a party of "challenged" youth; an émigré’s desire for sex with "gazebo angels" runs…
Controvertibles, poems by Quan Barry (Pittsburgh): The poems in Barry’s second book springboard from a wealth of subjects as the speaker seeks to close the gulf between the concrete and the abstract; whether interrogating the Shroud of Turin, meditating on seahorses with "fused jaws & stalked eyes argentine," or revisiting the murder of Emmett Till,…
Maxine Kumin recommends Waking Stone, poems by Carole Simmons Oles: “This creative biography-in-verse, about the life of a nineteenth-century sculptor who proved that a woman could handle a chisel as well as a palette, is often in the voice of Hosmer herself, and is lively, informative, and vividly told.” (Arkansas)
Margot Livesey recommends Openwork, a novel by Adria Bernardi: “An exquisitely written, vividly inhabited novel that follows the lives of three generations of Italian families.” (SMU)
The Birthdays, a novel by Heidi Pitlor (Norton): This debut traces a family reunion precipitated by Joe Miller’s seventy-fifth birthday and complicated by his wife Vera’s contemplation of an affair and the three different pregnancies involving their three different children. The kaleidoscopic effect of the roving third-person intimate point of view creates a crystalline portrait…
Philip Levine recommends The Ghost of You and Me, poems by Wesley McNair: “I wonder if Maine is half as interesting as the poetry Wesley McNair has written about the place. He finds so many skewed and irresistible characters who manage to get into odd situations for which there is only one remedy: to persevere….
Elizabeth Spires recommends Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, poems by Janice N. Harrington: “Like a hammer to gold, Harrington’s richly lyric voice shapes her poetic material into unforgettable ‘sung stories.’ One of the marvels of this book is its convincing and tender reanimation of lives lived in a black community in the…
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