The Maggot People – Henning Koch
Serious, grotesque absurdity: The Master and Margarita as written by William Burroughs, a politico-religious sci-fi thriller with talking dogs and immortal maggot people.
David Sedaris once quipped that speaking German is like speaking English but sideways. Reading The Wallcreeper — which happens, incidentally, to be set in mostly German-speaking places — feels like reading but sideways.
Our Secret Life in the Movies – Michael McGriff & J.M. Tyree
Films call up memories, and they also shape them, give them a lattice to grow on; viewing and memory, like lattice and vine, are interwoven. Everyone has a secret life in the movies.
The signifying power of the black hoodie, it seems, has aged well since 1993, and its longevity only attests to the persistence of many of the dominant strains of racist ideology in the contemporary United States.
This year, stories hit us deep. Collected here are ten of our favorite reviews published in 2014.
Belonging to a coffee table has never equalled a doomed lack of quality or depth.
In a culture that relishes pitting women against each other in mommy wars, I feel compelled to leave some traces on the page of another kind of argument.
The Laughing Monsters – Denis Johnson
Johnson seems content to produce an entertainment of the kind Graham Greene claimed to periodically write, a novel that engages the author’s characteristic themes, but in a manner that seems safely familiar.
For Dale and Hoa, middle-class fools who have waded in far too deep, the encounter will prove surreal and cathartic, though Gander is too sophisticated to provide a clear resolution.
@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex – Shane Harris
Most frustrating is the author’s futile attempt to reconcile his desire for a broad readership with his choice of a subject as inherently technical as cyber warfare.