Thirlwell’s achievement is in creating a character who is difficult — nay, impossible — to like, and yet, like Humbert Humbert, propulsive.
The prose does quick, good work. But it’s an uncomfortable consciousness to inhabit for long, sad-making and stomach-turning.
Dreamlike and horrifying, The Vorrh is permeated with an ominous power.
Ross’s novel offers readers an unending stream of snort-worthy punchlines with implicit boundaries for who can access this story and how they can.
Saterstrom gives voice to one of the American untouchables. It’s a complicated, beautiful, whimsical, troubling, and heart-breaking voice.
The Beautiful Bureaucrat – Helen Phillips
The Beautiful Bureaucrat revels in its playful and dark take on contemporary life, and yet never loses sight of its commitment to the brazen, and perhaps stupid, curiosity of the human.
A theatrical production of Shakespeare’s Pericles utilized the brain waves of its performers to project a poetic spectacle, a dreamlike, semi-unconscious generation.
Infinite Home – Kathleen Alcott
In the city, there is no dearth of lonely and broken people; Alcott’s skill lies in fitting these fragments together.
A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
There’s a largeness to these characters. They are so suffused with life, with pain, pleasure, intelligence and ambition, that they occasionally feel unreal.
Counternarratives – John Keene
The title Counternarratives can be understood as describing the way these stories actively push back against instituted narratives, forcing fictional flights of the imagination in order to pin down and ascertain certain truths that have been effectively lost.