Reviews

Thanks for This Riot – Janelle Bassett

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Connections, too often, mean relinquishing control, and none of the women in THANKS FOR THIS RIOT have enough to spare.

Grandma Non-Oui – Lidija Dimkovska

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Lidija Dimkovska’s new novel . . . explores how history mirrors human life itself: complex, recursive, non-linear, and defiantly inconclusive.

California Against the Sea – Rosanna Xia

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For Xia, the changing landscape is an opportunity to rectify past wrongs done to the environment and, in addition, to those who have been harmed in tandem with it.

Underground Barbie – Maša Kolanović

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For a novel set during debilitating times, UNDERGROUND BARBIE is frequently quite funny. The seriousness is masterfully cut, and paradoxically intensified, by the antics of the children and the scenarios they dream up.

My Child, the Algorithm – Hannah Silva

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Queerness . . . is both liberating and disorienting—it explodes stifling boundaries, yet doesn’t dictate exactly how to live in the aftermath. Queer parenthood complicates this further.

The Summer Without You – Petar Andonovski

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Despite its setting on the sun-soaked coast of Crete, THE SUMMER WITHOUT YOU shivers with the cold reckonings of disillusionment and adulthood

What Kingdom – Fine Gråbøl

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With her steady, precise attention to everyday life on this sad, cozy ward, Gråbøl gently troubles our received ideas about healing.

UXA.GOV – Blake Butler

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In UXA.GOV, complicity has its price, and there is no such things as a passive observer.

Vantage Points: On Media as Trans Memoir – Chase Joynt

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A curious mix of reflection and commentary on male privilege and abuse . . . frame[d] . . . through the theories of Marshall McLuhan, someone who fascinates [Joynt] both as an academic and as a distant relative.

Saturnin – Zdeněk Jirotka

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Saturnin wants his master to be an adventurer, but he doesn’t merely plan or dream: He acts on his fantasies, creating situations that force his master out of his banal existence and into the unexpected.