Millennials and the Moments that Made Us – Shaun Scott
[Shaun Scott] uses the book as an occasion to decenter and problematize the mainstream cultural idea of the American Millennial as any middle- or upper-class white twenty-something with a liberal arts degree trying to make it as, say, a voice of a generation.
The strangest thing that could happen in a story of modern, domestic malaise is for a struggling single mother not to, say, turn into a doily.
The result of Baricco’s game of omission could be seen either as an overweight but undefined metaphor, or an eerie suggestion of the ineffable power of words.
The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even – Chris F. Westbury
Imagine Duchamp’s The Large Glass if the bachelors and bride had transcended their respective glass panels, and were living happily ever after in Philly. I don’t know if I’d travel to Philly to see that.
Roundtable: Julia Fierro & Edan Lepucki
Learning how to talk about a novel when it’s not done without killing it is a real skill.
Little Failure – Gary Shteyngart
Little Failure depicts the trajectory of immigrant assimilation in this country, and the fast disinheritance of the past that either you or someone before you underwent to ensure that you function in the American present.
The off-putting merger of Playgirl and Dog Fancy.
John the Posthumous – Jason Schwartz
I could not find an appropriate place to read this book, lest it become tainted by its deft and oh-so-pretty insidiousness.
I didn’t believe in the “soul” before being here confronted by its absolute absence.
The Sinistra Zone – Ádám Bodor
Though the anti-communist critique begins pointedly, after working its way through the book’s vulgar and whimsical digestive tract, it plops out the back end of the novel watered down and amorphous.