Please take a moment to appreciate the perfection of the phrase “cuff of trapped blood.”
Complicated Grief – Laura Mullen
[Laura Mullen] adopts a new way of speaking about grief in every single chapter of this challenging work.
The prose does quick, good work. But it’s an uncomfortable consciousness to inhabit for long, sad-making and stomach-turning.
Words might not always be good enough, but they’re the best we have, and Maggie Nelson is one of the best writers alive to use them.
Ongoingness: The End of a Diary – Sarah Manguso
Reading this essay gives me hope that I will outgrow my fear of death.
Unlike other stories about the apocalypse, this book is tender.
House of Deer – Sasha Steensen
I’m always happy to see the I get up and perform. I have a weakness for confessions of hatred. And Steensen can be pleasingly disagreeable.
[Niceties] is the rare exception in which the term poetic used to describe fiction isn’t hyperbolic. The stories feel like prose poems because they operate according to associative logic and sonic pleasures.