Grand Menteur – Jean Marc Ah-Sen
I’m torn between thinking Grand Menteur somewhat messy and unfocused, and comparing it to the dizzying effect of a merry-go-round — you can almost catch hold of images as you pass, but never fully.
Holland’s language is dizzying, decadent, erotic.
See You in the Morning – Mairead Case
This is not the mode of the stereotypical teenage diary . . . this is the mode of someone hoping that by taking in everything, everything will be revealed.
I love to imagine a future in which a young trans writer can embrace this book as talismanic and important because it reflects something beautiful and singular.
Bats of the Republic – Zachary Thomas Dodson
Dodson seems to ask: why have we left the pages of books so dry when we can do so much?
B., like many other white members of her zeitgeist, cannot embrace her cultural present, so she tries to pilgrimage back in time.
Paulina & Fran – Rachel B. Glaser
In Paulina & Fran we see young women eager to shed conventions but ceaselessly drawn into their current when it comes to the ways humans traditionally relate to each other: with jealousy, longing, pity, hatred, love.
Gold Fame Citrus – Claire Vaye Watkins
[Gold Fame Citrus] speaks to the part of me that sees a drained lake as more than a localized crisis affecting only a handful of fish, and wonders about the texture and shape of the greater crisis that an event like this portends.
In this short but expansive book which reads sometimes like poetry, sometimes like philosophy, and always like resistance, Berkowitz encourages us to become authoritative about our own experiences.
Sometimes I Lie and Sometimes I Don’t – Nadja Spiegel
There is always the sense that Spiegel’s narrators are learning and relearning the rules of propriety; that they are struggling to negotiate public expectations.