Reviews

Feathers: A Bird-Hat Wearer’s Journal – Sarah Rose Nordgren

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Bird-hats gained popularity because they positioned the wearer as part of the natural world, but, as women toted corpses on their heads, they also aligned women with violence and monstrosity.

Woodworm – Layla Martínez

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This haunted house is both prison and protector, antagonist and ally. . . . Martínez seems to align this ambivalence with the downsides of vengeance itself.

We the Parasites – A.V. Marraccini

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Another type of critic might submit to art’s powers of possession, the battle to best or be bested by the work, its expression, the puncture that collapses the artist’s time with the viewer’s . . . The critic can help other viewers see the world from within an artwork’s viscera, the history-culture-language that sustains it.

The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks –Agnieszka Taborska

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At its heart, The Unfinished Life of Phoebe Hicks is a quirky love letter to the city of Providence.

Human Sadness – Goderdzi Chokheli

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HUMAN SADNESS has the unique feature of being translated by five different translators, all based around the Oxford Georgian Translation Project, to preserve the tonal differences between the various chroniclers . . .

The Translator’s Daughter – Grace Loh Prasad

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Framed through the lens of Prasad’s shifting relationship with her parents across geographies, THE TRANSLATOR’S DAUGHTER is a startling, aching account of [her] relationship to home.

Groove, Bang and Jive Around – Steve Cannon

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Discomfort is the mission. Comic madness is the method. After reading Cannon, there’s no going back to the world you came from.

A Mouth Holds Many Things – Dao Strom and Jyothi Natarajan, eds.

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A MOUTH has paved the way for future collections to follow . . . in a freshly de-canonized publishing universe, wherein works are able to discover a readership on the merits of their ingenuity and strangeness, rather than merely because they contribute or respond to whatever host of works precede them.

The Berlin Wall – David Leo Rice

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In The Berlin Wall, the cycle between tragedy and farce spins on, gaining speed as spells of incredible violence are desperately suppressed by the forces of order, only for the boil to begin bubbling against the lid once more.

The Book Censor’s Library – Bothayna Al-Essa

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In this world, the internet no longer exists, religion has been reconstituted into state-approved mush, the buildings are all gray slabs, and everyone wears khaki—for the good of the people, of course.