There’s naked commerce, and there’s writing with a concept of the reader. That will still be an important difference when we’re all MFAs and the water rises.
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.
It is not uncommon in discussions of Peter Handke’s work for both Handke and literary critics to refer to a “text” of his rather than to a novel, a play, or a memoir.
This Is the Garden – Giulio Mozzi
If only Tana could truly know another person, she need not learn that even heaven on earth itself cannot eliminate the human feeling of fracture.
Silence Once Begun – Jesse Ball
Essentially, Ball poses the question: “Can any of us can truly know ourselves, let alone the others around us?”
The Whole of Life – Jürg Laederach
Never before have I spent so long reading and re-reading a novel’s first page, trying to make sense of it. Already, I’d been tricked.
The Parallel Apartments – Bill Cotter
I laughed aloud more than once, but I also had to close the book at one point to stem my nausea.
Operation Massacre – Rodolfo Walsh
Walsh sees the world as it is, but he never loses sight of the world as it should be.
“Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing: block it out.” — Mr. Burns
At Night We Walk in Circles – Daniel Alarcón
It’s cinematic — a dark slapstick to watch these characters so deluded by their desires create such hazardous situations.