Three Strong Women – Marie NDiaye
NDiaye’s women are not strong due to their ability to overcome their trials or by doing something extraordinary.
Telegraph Avenue – Michael Chabon
Chabon can’t be separated from his aching nostalgia and whimsical tropes.
Ghost Dances – Josh Garrett-Davis
“Coming and going is the only thing native to the Plains,” Josh Garrett-Davis writes, which makes him a South Dakota native through-and-through.
How To Get Into the Twin Palms – Karolina Waclawiak
A book trying to say something that cannot be said directly. A book so full of spaces between clouds.
Most of the stories in WE’RE FLYING depict more quotidian anxieties than a crisis of faith.
Many chapters focus on the buildup to a dramatic turning point, ending just before the realization or confrontation occurs.
The Way the World Works – Nicholson Baker
Baker considers everything worth looking at, and The Way the World Works reminds us that these thoughts, from investigative to whimsical, are worth preserving.
Less like reading a novel than listening in on the background noise of the universe.
Questions always seem to haunt us: What are we fighting? Are we fighting it in a way that could make a meaningful difference?
The Investigation – Philippe Claudel
Why, after almost 100 years, would a novel that so obviously duplicates the most familiar features of the Kafkaesque, that so obviously wants to be Kafkaesque, also still want to be regarded as somehow original and daring?