Reviews

In Search of New Babylon – Dominique Scali

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This genealogy of American violence suggests the West as an extension of a mechanism long set in motion, always going to break in the singular, inevitable way it could have.

Medea – Catherine Theis

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Theis lives in the stage directions, in the unspoken.

The Knack of Doing – Jeremy M. Davies

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In fiction, it’s more fun when the watch, after pages and pages of diligent ticking, explodes, starts screaming, or shoots poop out of its dial — does something, anything, to upend the pattern or upset the conceit.

Bodies of Summer – Martin Felipe Castagnet

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At its best Castagnet’s debut work artfully skirts overt philosophizing about mind-body relations and necropolitics, keeping this slim speculative novel at an athletic pace and leaving ample room for us to explore its marvelous world for ourselves.

Rebellion in Patagonia – Osvaldo Bayer

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Rebellion in Patagonia revealed a tragedy of the highest order, no doubt. But it’s in the story of the book and what happened to its author that we find the farce.

History of a Disappearance – Filip Springer

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Springer’s history is simply a “beast,” sometimes slumbering, but more often fiercely awake.

Field Glass – Joanna Ruocco and Joanna Howard

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Howard and Ruocco suggest that communication breakdown — collectives living together in ignorance of each other’s meanings — is what draws lines between enemies.

Book of Mutter – Kate Zambreno

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This possibility of recognition — of really seeing, of really being seen — persists as long as someone is alive. But once they’re gone, how do we speak of and to the dead?

Inheritance from Mother – Minae Mizumura

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The novel’s power, in large part due to its sequencing of events, lies in the sense that the first chapter’s point of jadedness becomes inevitable, a naturally unnatural response to a lifetime of thwarted dreams.

Imperceptibly and Slowly Opening – ed. Caroline Picard

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IMPERCEPTIBLY AND SLOWLY OPENING is strongest when it decenters humans without erasing that human/plant interactions are a result and reflection of power.