The Wasp Eater, a novel by William Lychack (Houghton Mifflin): The scope of Lychack’s short novel—his debut book—is deceptively small. In 1979, a ten-year-old boy named Daniel in Connecticut is caught between his estranged parents. His father, a former marine with a "sweepstakes smile and sly charm" who works as a window washer, is booted…
Citizen, poems by Andrew Feld (Perennial): Elegant, frank, and wise, the poems in Andrew Feld’s first book initially appear composed; yet, within each is a narrative that, in its unfolding, becomes dangerous in its revelation. This is a book of journeys, literal and figurative, as Feld transverses an earlier American landscape menaced by encroaching civilization,…
The Winter Without Milk, stories by Jane Avrich (Mariner):What can be said about a writer who reimagines everyone from Oedipus to Hester Prynne, and throws in common contemporary folk for good measure? Here are stories that are literary in the best sense of the word-smart, witty, erudite, even at times bookish. This first collection hums…
The Owl Question, poems by Faith Shearin (Utah State):The speaker of these poems, always quick-witted and warm, considers her place among the commonplace. While all of the poems in this debut collection deal with subjects close to home—family, childhood, motherhood—they shiver with a nervous tension as the speaker returns again to the fact that she…
Lucky Girls, stories by Nell Freudenberger (Ecco): It seems impossible that a writer of Freudenberger’s youth could know so much about the world, but she does. The five long stories in this first book—mostly about young American women who are living as expatriates in Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay—crackle with acuity and authenticity. The narration doesn’t miss…
The Room Where I Was Born, poems by Brian Teare (Wisconsin): In his first book, Teare exceeds his ambition to build a wholly new system of myths, and creates an utterly complex and harrowing volume as structurally and figuratively brilliant as it is genius in its lyrical flexibility. The many subjects of this book devour…
Serious Girls, a novel by Maxine Swann (Doubleday): Maxine Swann—after claiming a Best American, an O. Henry, and a Pushcart for a single story that appeared in Ploughshares—follows two girls struggling to transcend the limitations of their childhood in her riveting debut novel. This is a wise and wonderful piece of storytelling that teaches us…
The Saint of Burning Down, poems by Nicole Cuddeback (Zoo): With a penchant for the things of this world that reminds one of Bishop, Cuddeback’s first book catalogues landscapes diverse as the fecund silt of her childhood Florida to sunlit, crowd-filled piazzas of Florence, Italy. The book opens with the speaker as a muted and…
Discography, poems by Sean Singer (Yale): Selected by W. S. Merwin as winner of the 2001 Yale Series of Younger Poets, Sean Singer’s Discography is a singular, quirky, and, at times, astonishingly beautiful first book. While jazz provides the central subject matter and metaphor for the collection, Singer’s poems don’t spend much time in rooms…
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