Such Small Hands – Andrés Barba
SUCH SMALL HANDS is a slender book that falls into that other category: a tidily executed project, one with tremendous tonal intimacy and rhythmic language.
Carter succeeds in creating a lush but airless environment in which the anxieties of “adulting” — finding direction, meaning, maintaining a home — are amplified to crippling effect.
The Necro-Luminescence of Pink Mist – Ed Steck
Escher-like decompositions of selves, objects, bodies, places, and moments congeal baroquely, but there is nothing speculative or futuristic to this world. In fact, the world of PINK MIST feels chillingly contemporary.
Tea’s writing is queer in that it questions everything.
Eve Out of Her Ruins – Ananda Devi
I looked up from the fever dream of this Troumaron world to recognize myself in Kuala Lumpur, feeling like something is being sucked out of me.
House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
I am constantly conflicted with Johnson. Is he a successful experimental author because of or in spite of his formidable ability to spin a yarn?
WATCHFIRES explores how personal accounts of cancer and autoimmune disorder might illuminate the collective contemporary moment.
My Private Property – Mary Ruefle
Voice is a strange part of me. It gives language to what I experience, and experiences alongside me. Voice — in speech or in Ruefle’s case writing — also affects the very experience it tries to articulate.
Homesick for Another World – Otessa Moshfegh
We’re human, we’re fucked, how do we even love when the impulse yields nothing but disgusting spores because we’re breathing into the necks of garbage people: it’s 2017.
Folding the Red into the Black – Walter Mosley
Written before the Trump ascendency, Walter Mosley’s UNTOPIA stands as an accessible point-by-point inventory of real systemic shortcomings dressed up by American optimism.