Every Past Thing, a novel by Pamela Thompson (Unbridled Books): I mean no slight to Pamela Thompson’s dazzling first novel, Every Past Thing, when I say that here is a book that can be judged by its cover: A reproduction of Edwin Romanzo Elmer’s exquisite "Mourning Picture." (The original hangs in the Smith College Museum…
The Monsters of Templeton, a novel by Lauren Groff (Voice): What’s fresh and fun about The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff, is how it doesn’t fit neatly into one contemporary genre. It’s literary, it’s historical, and it’s peppered with mysteries, ghosts, and "monsters." Even the packaging of the book is a delight—full of illustrations,…
National Anthem, poems by Kevin Prufer (Four Way): Kevin Prufer’s terrific fourth collection exposes a nightmare straight from the head of Walt Whitman. In it, America sings a democratic song of distress, with no one, or thing, denied suffering or a voice: not the moon, nor minor politicians, shopping centers or the book’s most prevalent…
Home Remedies, stories by Angela Pneuman (Harcourt): In this dark and spirited debut collection, Pneuman mines the quirks of characters who hail from Kentucky to explore issues of religion, family, death, and sexual attraction. The eight fully realized stories featured here are sharp, well told, and—most important—fearless in their capacity to explore the contradictions both…
Teeth, poems by Aracelis Girmay (Curbstone): The glorious and free-spirited poems of Girmay’s first collection move headlong beneath "bejackled" skies, spurred by passions so generous and unhindered as to recall Neruda’s magnanimous lyrics. With acrobatic ease, the poet swings from praise to lament, always returning to the heart’s motivating ardor for the larger world—its liars,…
The Best Place to Be, a novel in stories by Lesley Dormen (Simon & Schuster): In this debut fiction, Dormen successfully captures all the pivotal moments in a woman’s life—dealing with college, facing the death of her mother, arriving at middle age with grace and humor—although not necessarily in chronological order. "I didn’t have any…
Sister, poems by Nickole Brown (Red Hen): Using umbilicus as guide rail, the speaker of this unflinching and brilliant first book undertakes a hair-lifting expedition back to her childhood, returning to a younger sister both long neglected and longed for. Proving that narrative and lyric are never mutually exclusive, Brown pulls the reader down the…
Epistles, poems by Mark Jarman, (Sarabande): Prized for his achievements in metrical verse and his deft deployment of English prosody, Mark Jarman turns, in Epistles, to the prose poem for this series of thirty dramatic monologues. Jarman’s explicit titular reference to the Apostolic letters of Paul lays the groundwork for an exhilarating experiment in this…
The Pajamaist, poems by Mathew Zapruder (Copper Canyon): There is a famous story about John Lennon’s visit to a London art gallery in the sixties, in which the Beatle was faced with a precariously tall step ladder leading up to a dangling telescope. When he climbed to the top of the ladder and looked through…
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