Hjorth reworks that old aphorism: unhappy stories are all alike. It’s the ones that eke out a kind of happiness that set themselves apart.
The Buddha learned to extinguish desire. For [Debré’s] narrator, desire appears as liberation, what the rigid world of shitless boredom kept from her.
The Singularity – Balsam Karam
Karam has written a surprising work of horror, embedded in two motherhood plots that briefly connect in an unnamed harbor town half-recovered from a violent conflict.
Capitalist modernity renders mothers and daughters as autonomy-desiring “units”; SALT reveals the ache of this separation.
Lonespeech is a dialogue edited down to a poem, its minimalism acknowledging the blank space around its “cut-out” phrases.
A hypnotic novel, itself seemingly hypnotized by bodily fluids.
A Small Apocalypse – Laura Chow Reeve
Reeve’s imagined worlds are not habitable alternatives but critical comments on this one. Her idea of a refuge is not the infinite expanse of the interior self, but the tight-knit, embattled queer family in a hostile world.
Like a Sky Inside – Jakuta Alikavazovic
Alikavazovic’s writing is contemplative and digressive, roving like the insatiable gaze of a consummate museum goer.
In each of your holes I find an invitation—an invitation to the party of the limitless, in spite of it all. Tell me more.
The Museum of Human History – Rebekah Bergman
Bergman emphasize[s] that our obligations are to those living, no matter how important the dead are. We must choose to be present with those around us.