The figure of the flâneur is generally a de-politicized one; it is typically a man who observes the world from a safe, distanced, detached perspective.
Bloodletting in Minor Scales – Justin Limoli
The dismissal of “heaviness” from experimental or mainstream quarters alike is an evasion.
The Boy Who Stole Attila’s Horse – Iván Repila
“Small goes on dying for days, and his brother goes on keeping him alive. As if they were playing.” This is Repila’s game, and he’s good at it.
Bats of the Republic – Zachary Thomas Dodson
Dodson seems to ask: why have we left the pages of books so dry when we can do so much?
The Mark and the Void – Paul Murray
Murray pulls off the impossible. He writes a funny, poignant, human, and philosophical novel about an investment banker.
B., like many other white members of her zeitgeist, cannot embrace her cultural present, so she tries to pilgrimage back in time.
Paulina & Fran – Rachel B. Glaser
In Paulina & Fran we see young women eager to shed conventions but ceaselessly drawn into their current when it comes to the ways humans traditionally relate to each other: with jealousy, longing, pity, hatred, love.
Beauty Is A Wound – Eka Kurniawan
The concern takes us back to the original question: genre-based marketing labels risk reducing the individuality of books and flattening them into kitsch. But I’d like, hesitantly, to argue back: isn’t this only true if we think of magic realism as an ossified thing?
Gold Fame Citrus – Claire Vaye Watkins
[Gold Fame Citrus] speaks to the part of me that sees a drained lake as more than a localized crisis affecting only a handful of fish, and wonders about the texture and shape of the greater crisis that an event like this portends.
In this short but expansive book which reads sometimes like poetry, sometimes like philosophy, and always like resistance, Berkowitz encourages us to become authoritative about our own experiences.