Reviews

A Cigarette Lit Backwards – Tea Hacic-Vlahovic

by

I was, in my own JNCO ways, very much like Kat and maybe you were, too.

Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche – Vi Khi Nao

by

Suicide: The Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche is brutal—so brutal that one wonders how its author survived to write it.

The Flowers of Buffoonery – Osamu Dazai

by

This creator of moody, Dostoevskian heroes—toeing the line between brutality and beauty, cynicism and élan—has the kind of biography that threatens to overshadow the work itself, and that’s before you realize that most of what Dazai wrote is taken to be autobiographical.

A Private Affair – Beppe Fenoglio

by

In Fenoglio’s narrative of war, everyone is equally dehumanized and every story equally absurd.

Papers – Violaine Schwartz

by

The book asks the reader to reflect on the cost of indifference to the world, particularly as the state translates human life into the abstractions necessary for bureaucratic processing.

Fungirl – Elizabeth Pich

by

Fungirl doesn’t care: “Wholesome” is “nauseating.”

Affinities – Brian Dillon & We the Parasites – A. V. Marraccini

by

Together, these books advocate for a new way of inhabiting the works of art we admire . . .

Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery – John West

by

Offering readers an example of how to move through this process of creatively reshaping our identities, West gestures to the potential of each reader to experience rebirth and recovery. 

The Hive – Camilo José Cela

by

For all its humor and moments of warmth, The Hive is a portrait of misery.

Epic Annette – Anne Weber

by

Rather than gods atop Mount Olympus, the engine of dramatic irony may well be the voice of bitter experience.