Best of the Book Reviews, 2013 (in No Particular Order)
In 2013, through the immeasurable support of its contributors, Full Stop ran 93 reviews on new and reissued books by young, innovative, in translation, and otherwise under-appreciated writers.
As a writer who grew up in the age of the web, Eggers today seems more scared than fascinated by the digital ethos of social media whose birth pangs he witnessed two decades ago.
A Prayer Journal – Flannery O’Connor
“I would like to write a beautiful prayer,” O’Connor says in one radiant moment, “but I have nothing to do it from.”
Everything Happens as It Does – Albena Stambolova
The stories of a handful of comingling lives unspool with the beguiling sense of fatedness that overtakes all events once they’ve happened the way they’ve happened to happen.
As I read these stories, I found myself looking inside for the makings of a creature.
The off-putting merger of Playgirl and Dog Fancy.
Stop Here – Beverly Gologorsky
Our sympathy might not be enough.
Seiobo There Below – László Krasznahorkai
The existence of this book suggests art represents a chance worth taking.
The Mehlis Report – Rabee Jaber
Some critics suggest that Jaber, who writes prolifically, needs to slow down or submit himself to an editor’s scissors. But The Mehlis Report makes for a glorious ramble, a leaping of the lines between investigation and gossip, between present and past, between life and death.
More watching than touching and as much mourning as loving, Love Dog is about love but because of that it is about everything.