Reviews

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman – Patricia Melo

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While violent fantasy is cathartic, it does not bring about justice. That, the narrator comes to realize, is found elsewhere.

kochanie, today i bought bread – Uljana Wolf

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It’s a testament to Nissan’s work as a translator that this collection of Wolf’s poems offers an abundance of doorways for English-language readers. You don’t need to be steeped in the history of German poetry to engage with this book deeply and powerfully.

The Sanctuary – Gustavo Eduardo Abrevaya

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Álvaro, an Argentinian indie filmmaker traveling to a cabin in the south of his country to finish writing a screenplay . . . simply can’t shut off his attempts to turn every real-life event into a plot point.

The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty – Ha Jin

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Yomei remains an adherent of the Stanislavskian method she learns in Russia. . . . Jin’s novel is, in many ways, an attempt to apply this principle to fiction.

Barefoot Doctor – Can Xue

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The writing has nothing to hide behind. That alone can make a reader nervous. What’s even more nerve-rending is the prospect of living inside an artistic experiment when its creator has warned you there’s no trapdoor.

Still Alive – LJ Pemberton

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I keep thinking of STILL ALIVE as a queer Fight Club for the millennial generation. Like that earlier Gen-X novel, STILL ALIVE retains a critique of the empty promises of capitalism, one that centers queer women instead of macho men. In place of fist-fighting, we get fisting.

Dispatches from the Diaspora – Gary Younge

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By placing his Blackness at the center of his project as a journalist, Younge has been able to make clear-eyed examinations of racial politics around the globe

The Remains – Margo Glantz

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Nora grieves, remembers, and writes, and the streams of her inward life flow through a text that vibrates with texture.

Touching the Art – Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

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Today, few know the name Gladys Goldstein. She may not have achieved the renown of the abstract expressionist giants like Jackson Pollock, but she’s the star of Touching the Art.

Voice of the Fish – Lars Horn

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Horn takes readers on an autobiographical sojourn into the mind of a transnational, transmasculine writer and savant of the aquatic.

She Is Haunted – Paige Clark

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She Is Haunted mixes elements of melodrama—the mother-daughter psychodrama above all—into a traumatic temporality in which the past is never-ending.

The Moon Over Edgar – Ian Felice

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This collection advocates for attention to dreams, the uncanny, the mundane, and the moon as if now is the time to devote ourselves to that possibility rather than, like Edgar, letting our life pass before us.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman – Patricia Melo

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While violent fantasy is cathartic, it does not bring about justice. That, the narrator comes to realize, is found elsewhere.

kochanie, today i bought bread – Uljana Wolf

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It’s a testament to Nissan’s work as a translator that this collection of Wolf’s poems offers an abundance of doorways for English-language readers. You don’t need to be steeped in the history of German poetry to engage with this book deeply and powerfully.