The Last Days of My Mother – Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson
Drinking novels are familiar, death of a family member novels are familiar, dark comedies, familiar, but Last Days brings something new: a mother and son with absolutely zero boundaries.
The Fun We’ve Had – Michael J. Seidlinger
A mix of philosophy, gallows humor, love, and poetry that adds up to beautiful storytelling completely devoid of gimmicks and clichés.
Hour three: My head hurts. I feel like I have been translating. I have stopped tweeting.
The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even – Chris F. Westbury
Imagine Duchamp’s The Large Glass if the bachelors and bride had transcended their respective glass panels, and were living happily ever after in Philly. I don’t know if I’d travel to Philly to see that.
While I hope that in the sequel the characters devote their lives to some kind of fight for social justice, this story itself, told by a woman, about women, is refreshing.
Beautiful Soul, in its scrupulous attention to phrase and image in almost every sentence, could be called an attempt to bring the characters and their milieu to life through the vigor of the words on the page.
The Albertine Workout – Anne Carson
Following the tracks Carson leaves in the language is a little like getting to be a dog for an hour, for a day.
My Struggle (Books 1–3) – Karl Ove Knausgaard
Telling the truth at this length seems to ask in the starkest way possible why writers turn to fiction to give shape to experience.
Last Words from Montmartre – Qiu Miaojin
While Last Words from Montmartre can at times read as an outpouring of undirected and incoherent desire, it would be wrong to take it as the document of an emotional breakdown.
Shane Jones’ writing does not fit into any of the genres by which we sort the books on our shelves. Unless you have a bookshelf specifically for Weird, Delightful, and Sometimes Painful.