Things That Can and Cannot Be Said – Arundhati Roy and John Cusack
In THINGS THAT CAN AND CANNOT BE SAID, traveling to see Snowden is a little like waiting for Godot. The non-event clears the way for an empty contemplative space.
Charlotte Wood – The Natural Way of Things
To some, THE NATURAL WAY OF THINGS, as an allegorical novel, might seem a bit on the nose in terms of how it tackles misogyny, particularly slut-shaming.
Clothed, Female Figure – Kirstin Allio
Class, as much as gender, impacts the way Allio’s characters experience the world.
Restless Continent – Aja Couchois Duncan
The speaker, a person split between Ojibwe and European lineages, is uninterested in narratives that paint the colonization of the North American continent as a sentimental tale of innocence lost and civilization found. How would the earth remember?
Inherited Disorders – Adam Ehrlich Sachs
An inheritance, then, is just another way by which fathers and sons disappoint and misunderstand each other.
The Young Bride – Alessandro Baricco
This novel is a captivating, fable-like story about a family that lives each day the same as the last in order to suspend the passage of time. It is a quirky, beautiful, and warmly humorous reflection on how the fear of our own mortality affects the way that we live our lives.
Three New Story Collections, Five Ways
Mainly I want you to finish the review thinking things like, Hm, maybe I should read that book, or Maybe I won’t read it, but at least I have a clear sense of it! (And, most important of all, Wow, that guy knows a lot about the New York Mets!)
What really saves MISCHLING is Konar’s astonishing lyricism. Against Adorno’s statement, here there is poetry in everything.
Describing the Past – Ghassan Zaqtan
And I do not mean to elide that these stories are Palestinian, as is the loss they both recall and presage.
Aloha / irish trees – Eileen Myles
A record of attempts at articulation.