Reviews

Night Film – Marisha Pessl

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What can I say? The lure of the forbidden is powerful.

Idiopathy – Sam Byers

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Awake to both the subtly human and bitterly hysterical faces of contemporary life

God In Proof – Nathan Schneider

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Schneider mixes together philosophy, memoir, journalism, and a good bit of sociology to get at a fundamental question: not, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” but rather, “What role do proofs of God play in human life?”

Duplex – Kathryn Davis

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Davis’s sentences channel that half-state between consciousness and unconsciousness, that foggy place where you realize you’re waking up but are still enraptured by the vivid imagery that’s been parading through your head all night.

The Woman Upstairs – Claire Messud

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A treatise on repressed creativity, voyeurism, obsession, and misanthropy, The Woman Upstairs is an exhausting ego-trip to behold.

Under This Terrible Sun – Carlos Busqued

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Stoner culture and noir, when both are at their best, are experiments in mood and atmospherics.

The Currency of Paper – Alex Kovacs

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The Currency of Paper is certainly a novel of ideas, albeit in a more literal sense.

Note to Self – Alina Simone

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Whether the book does succeed in being comforting or in making its readers happy — depends perhaps upon the reader’s tolerance for Schadenfreude

Lotería – Mario Alberto Zambrano

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Fiction is never real, but good fiction is always true.

Before I Burn – Gaute Heivoll

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An irrepressible story, one that dissolves all certainty, and which can hardly be contained by words without threatening to burn them to the ground.