Sir William Forsythe’s Freebase Nuptials – Sean Kilpatrick
Stuck festering between brows high and low, Kilpatrick’s latest instantaneously ignored struggle with cultural iconography and line quality inflicts (potential) readers with his wang mural on a bathroom stall.
The Influence Peddlers – Hédi Kaddour
If increasingly Islamophobic western cultures can be collectively taken as Troy, THE INFLUENCE PEDDLERS at its best is a Trojan Horse in which not all the soldiers fit — or at least fit comfortably.
I, Parrot – Deb Olin Unferth and Elizabeth Haidle
While the medium of Unferth’s work has transmogrified into this alternate form, her message remains the same: How the fuck did I get here, and now how do I get out?
I’ll admit here that I definitely have a crush on Joe Osmundson. It’s one of those queer crushes where you’re unsure of its origin, but quite sure of its force.
The book foregrounds its seams because this book is also about its own making.
The Book of Resting Places – Thomas Mira y Lopez
Mira y Lopez’s encyclopedic interests flirt with the ready information saturation of the current moment, but his facile movement between subjects, both cerebral and intimate, honor the careful attention of authorship over hiveminded wikis.
Perhaps the novel’s greatest value is in demonstrating that unorthodox writing strategies need not make a literary work difficult for a patient reader.
Infinite Ground – Martin MacInnes
This is much more than a book with multiple endings (or even multiple worlds); this is an impressive exploration of porosity.
The Veneration of Monsters – Suzanne Burns
In THE VENERATION OF MONSTERS, the monsters emerge from the least-likely candidates: the cat lady, the suburban housewife, the librarian, the vacationing married couple. In other words, this is Burns exploring a more everyday strange.
Pretend We Are Lovely – Noley Reid
You put pounds of candy in your freezer you guess to give you a false sense of abundance?, a tip from a self-help book on unfull hearts and how to handle them.