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…
Sea of Faith, poems by John Brehm (Wisconsin): Very few poets seem able to land all grown-up on the pages of their first books—often they are tentative, anonymous—but John Brehm arrives with a great chorus trailing, and he does so without apology, which is a delight because he’s a very interesting man, it seems, one…
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, stories by Yiyun Li (Random House): The stories in this debut book are boldly plotted, deeply felt, and slyly humorous. The overall effect is of having read a number of powerful novels, intertwined by setting and race (all the stories involve Chinese or Chinese Americans). In "Extra," a lonely…
Green Squall, poems by Jay Hopler (Yale): Hopler’s Floridian terrain is as seductive as it is venomous. Amid this wizardry of growth, we find the speaker stunned into stasis and paralyzed by ennui. Much of this book centers on Desire as a figure; in the wonderful longer poem "Of Hunger and Human Freedom," Hopler further…
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…
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