In a culture that relishes pitting women against each other in mommy wars, I feel compelled to leave some traces on the page of another kind of argument.
The Laughing Monsters – Denis Johnson
Johnson seems content to produce an entertainment of the kind Graham Greene claimed to periodically write, a novel that engages the author’s characteristic themes, but in a manner that seems safely familiar.
For Dale and Hoa, middle-class fools who have waded in far too deep, the encounter will prove surreal and cathartic, though Gander is too sophisticated to provide a clear resolution.
@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex – Shane Harris
Most frustrating is the author’s futile attempt to reconcile his desire for a broad readership with his choice of a subject as inherently technical as cyber warfare.
The Last Projector – David James Keaton
Everything from car accidents and vicious dog attacks to a broken penis and punches to the face are hurled at the reader without any time for rest.
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country – William H. Gass
Gass is not an obfuscator by nature, but rather one who would show you how a thing works, whether it’s the clockwork of a sentence by Henry James or the heart of a fascist.
The Anatomy of Dreams – Chloe Benjamin
Too many sentences feel freighted with meaning — too small to be foreshortening, too clunky to seem clever in hindsight.
Bolaño: A Biography in Conversations – Mónica Maristain
A kind of memorial service where stories — and differing accounts of the man — can be heard amid the rapturous din of conjecture.
McGlue is covered in a lush filth.
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing – Eimear McBride
If the prose style we encounter is initially resistant to our usual expectations, it acquires its own kind of clarity in advancing the narrative.