Meander, Spiral, Explode – Jane Alison
Why would the exploration of the formal possibilities (in all their complexity) not be just as crucial to the integrity of fiction as evoking emotion in the reader?
Tonic and Balm – Stephanie Allen
The attempt to extract from history an elegiac redemption story may not entirely avoid superimposing a present idealization on the past.
The hypertext author is unavoidably confronting the role of order and form in fiction
[PASSING AWAY] may most adeptly assimilate the influence of those adventurous writers whose work Tom LeClair the critic has so usefully illuminated.
RIDDANCE, it turns out, is not simply (or even primarily) a gothic fantasy about communing with the dead but an allegory about writing.
A Swarm of Dust – Evald Flisar
To what extent can we indeed plausibly claim to be focusing our attention on the text itself when the context needed to make the text fully intelligible might be missing?
The Solitary Twin – Harry Mathews
To fully appreciate the fiction of Harry Mathews, we must take the notion of “game” not in the sense used by many critics to imply frivolity and lack of purpose, but as an activity that poses a challenge.
Strawberry Fields – Hilary Plum
If STRAWBERRY FIELDS deflects some of our attention away from the usual interest in plot and character, its formal arrangement deftly reinforces its ethical ambitions.
The Unmapped Country – Ann Quin
The substance of Ann Quin’s novels are not to be found in their stories but in the ways in which Quin displaces the story without ever quite abandoning it.
Perhaps the novel’s greatest value is in demonstrating that unorthodox writing strategies need not make a literary work difficult for a patient reader.