Work Tagged With ‘fiction review’
Good Intentions by Jeff Lacy (A Review by David Atkinson)
310 pgs/$18.95 Many of us forget that the people involved in the criminal justice system are still people. After all, the only contact many of us knowingly have with such people is through the news, such not being a common … Continue reading
Three Squares a Day With Occasional Torture by Julie Innis (A Review by Meg Tuite)
Foxhead Books 188pgs/$15 There are moments, hours, days in a lifetime that you actually feel like you have gone somewhere to a point on a map that doesn’t exist. That is the power of great writing. You’ve been transported from … Continue reading
The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel (A Review by Dawn West)
Unbridled Books 288pgs/$24.95 If the crime thriller, bildungsroman, and domestic realism genres all got together for drinks in a smoky blue-toned jazz club and went home in a needy haze of swamp heat, passing abandoned businesses and ignored newsstands, to … Continue reading
American Poet by Jeff Vande Zande (A Review by Brian Fanelli)
Bottom Dog Press 160 pages, $18 American Poet is a novel filled with scenes that are all too familiar to anyone involved in a local poetry community. Jeff Vande Zande successfully depicts awkward open mic nights, workshops, and competitive … Continue reading
Zee Bee & Bee (aka Propeller Hats for the Dead) by David James Keaton (A Review by Simon Jacobs)
Open Casket Press 148pgs/$10.99 “…And With These Hats We Shall Fly† 1. “Shiver Moments” The premise to David James Keaton’s novella Zee Bee & Bee (aka Propeller Hats for the Dead) ought to be enough: a themed bed-and-breakfast in which customers … Continue reading
Variations of a Brother War By J.A. Tyler (A Review by Ryan Werner)
Small Doggies Press 116 pgs/$12.95 Fairness, love, and war are usually dealt with in that order. This says nothing of the truths found within the inversions, the war in love and the love of fairness and how it’s only a … Continue reading
Wichita by Thad Ziolkowski (A Review by Sara Lippmann)
Tonga Books 256 pgs/$16 It takes a certain kind of writer to pull off a wild rumpus of a book. (Particularly, when there are no accompanying illustrations of teeth and eyes and claws.) Acclaimed poet (Our Son the Arson) and … Continue reading
Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins (A Review by David Atkinson)
Atticus Books 216 pgs/$7.99 In recent memory, it seems that much of the fiction that receives significant critical attention is the writing that is unusual. Whether this means fiction that experiments with language, fiction that challenges what a story is … Continue reading
Cataclysm Baby by Matt Bell (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)
Mud Luscious Press 118 pgs/$12 Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby has been a tremendously difficult book for me to review. I’ve read it twice now and still find myself at a loss for words, though, admittedly, it’s a loss in an … Continue reading
The Postmortal by Drew Magary (A Review by Steven Casimer Kowalski)
Penguin 384 pgs/$10  The Postmortal is a book about a near future in which humans develop a “cure†for aging. Take the cure, and you’re locked in at the same age until an outside force like cancer or a bullet … Continue reading
Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine (A Review by Lynne Weiss)
Tonga Books/Europa Editions 176 pages/$15.00 Anyone who loves reading has discovered at some point the book or the character that seems to offer a model for how to live. Some find it in Dostoevsky, others in Austen, or Bronte, or … Continue reading
Living Arrangements by Laura Maylene Walter (A Review by Dawn West)
BkMk Press 175 pgs/$12 Laura Maylene Walter’s Living Arrangements is a collection of finely honed stories, all deeply concerned with place and memory. Her stories are quietly resonant–beneath the everyday veneer of each of her characters, Walter clarifies their internal … Continue reading
Creatures Here Below by O. H. Bennett (A Review by Martin Macaulay)
Agate Bolden 272 pgs/$10 O H Bennett’s Creatures Here Below is an accomplished and compelling novel. Structured around character-titled sections, the author pushes us into the lives of Mason and his mother Gail. They share top billing in terms of … Continue reading
A Cloth House by Joseph Riippi (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)
Housefire, 2012. 94 pgs/$7.99 Everyone has the capacity for several different types of memories, one of which is the flashbulb memory. A flashbulb memory is a highly precise snapshot sort of memory, one that sticks with a person for a … Continue reading
They Hover Over Us by Richard Fellinger (A Review by Dawn Zera)
Snake Nation Press $25.00 In his solid collection of short stories, They Hover Over Us, the 2011 winner of the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award for fiction, Richard Fellinger writes about Pennsylvania’s rust belt so vividly that I nodded and winced and … Continue reading
A Hollow Cube is a Lonely Space by S.D. Foster (A Review by David Atkinson)
Eraserhead Press 108 pgs/$9.95 Â As a preliminary matter, I am not an expert on bizarro fiction. In all honesty, I’ve never been able to truly define what it is, or is not. I’ve never been able to really be … Continue reading
Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events by Kevin Moffett (A Review by Amye Archer)
Harper Perennial 240 pgs, $10 I first met Kevin Moffett on a cool April evening when he cracked open my skull with an ice pick and settled into my brain for the next three weeks. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t … Continue reading
God’s Autobio by Rolli (A Review by David Atkinson)
Now or Never Publishing 233 pgs/$17.95 To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I picked up God’s Autobio by Rolli. I hadn’t heard a lot of talk about the book. In fact, I hadn’t really heard … Continue reading
Shenanigans! by Joseph Michael Owens (A Review by David Atkinson)
Grey Sparrow Press 100 pgs/$9.99 I’ve heard that by the time Bukowski was really into the swing of things as a writer, he had stopped reading much of anything. He did not feel that most of what he came across … Continue reading
Hot Pink by Adam Levin (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)
McSweeney’s 256 pgs/$18 Sometimes, other people really sum up your thoughts more perfectly than you can—at least in a single statement:  Dude just got his foot off everybody’s throat and now he’s back ALREADY. That’s what Adam Novy (The Avian … Continue reading
So There! By Nicole Louise Reid (A Review by Janet Freeman)
Stephen F. Austin University Press 176 pgs/$12 Reading Nicole Louise Reid’s short story collection So There! is like reuniting with someone you thought had left the planet years ago—or in this case, a host of someones: sassy, fearless girls … Continue reading
The Mimic’s Own Voice by Tom Williams (A Review by David Atkinson)
Main Street Rag 97 pgs/$9 There are few things in life, at least for me, as captivating as a puzzle. As much as my mind craves answers; answers that leave other lingering questions are the sort that I find … Continue reading
The Rebel Wife by Taylor M. Polites (A Review by Tyler Grimm)
Simon & Schuster $15.99/304 pgs. The Rebel Wife, expertly written by Taylor M. Polites, is a genre-subverting novel, framed within the Southern Gothic tradition that is very much a meditation on the purposeless of death, which is immediately evident in … Continue reading
All Her Father’s Guns by James Warner (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)
Numina Press $13.95/200 pgs. The United States of America is heavily divided, possibly more so now than anytime since the end of the civil war. Strict bipartisanism and our elected representatives’ inabilities to cross party lines is one of the … Continue reading
Theater State by Jack Boettcher (A Review by P. Jonas Bekker)
Blue Square Press 198 pgs/$12 In Theater State, Jack Boettcher’s debut novel, published by Blue Square Press, the world has become what we wanted it to be. And yet, it isn’t exactly what we thought it would be. Although Boettcher … Continue reading
Bearded Women by Teresa Milbrodt (A Review by David Atkinson)
ChiZine Publications 250 pages/$21 I do not think anyone would argue that most people are not overly attracted to the unusual, the bizarre. Freak shows would never have been so prevalent if this was not the case. Certainly, modern views … Continue reading
Damned by Chuck Palahniuk (A Review by Stanton Hancock)
Doubleday 256 pgs, $14 Madison Spencer has it all. Rich Hollywood A-list parents, houses all over the globe, private jets to shuttle her wherever she desires to go, all the perks of the super-elite. There’s just one problem – she’s … Continue reading
A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles (A Review by Joseph Michael Owens)
McSweeneys 955 pgs, $24 A Moment in the Sun is a tricky book for me to review. At 955 pages, it’s definitely the longest book I’ve read since McSweeney’s last “big book,†The Instructions by Adam Levin (which I highly … Continue reading
Baby and Other Stories by Paula Bomer (A Review by Dawn West)
My sister was always the one who talked about getting married, having babies. She wanted six children. That’s always what she said, and it’s always disturbed me. I thought, even when I was very young, that having so many babies … Continue reading
Boundaries by Elizabeth Nunez (A Review by David S. Atkinson)
Akashic Books $22.95 Tension is not usually comfortable in actual life. In fact, most people do what they can to avoid having tension in their lives. Strangely enough, though, tension seems generally necessary for stories to hold reader interest. If … Continue reading
Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter (A Review by Joseph Owens)
Featherproof Books 217 pages OK, before I dive into this review, I feel compelled to offer my two cents on an issue I personally feel is pressing. “Experimental literature†is kind of a nebulous term and ultimately a misnomer. Though … Continue reading
The Gambler’s Nephew by Jack Matthews (A Review by David Atkinson)
Etruscan Press $12.75 Perhaps I am just prejudiced against historical novels, but to me there seems to be a distinction between historical novels and novels that are set in a historical place and time. In the way I draw the … Continue reading
Freight by Mel Bosworth (A Review by Morowa Yejidé)
Folded Word Press $14 It isn’t often that a story allows us to simply muse, to contemplate the high and the low of things, but Mel Bosworth’s Freight does just that. This novel is aware of its own kind of … Continue reading
Damascus by Joshua Mohr (A Review by Tyler Grimm)
Available October 2011 from Two Dollar Radio 208 pages $16.00 “A life without art was like skin without tattoos, boring and empty and pale.†  - Joshua Mohr (Damascus) We’ve all been to seedy bars. Hell, some of us practically … Continue reading
Domestic Apparition by Meg Tuite (A Review by Anna March)
San Francisco Bay Press $14.99 Meg Tuite’s “Domestic Apparition†is sublime. In this mosaic of tightly intertwined chapters that seamlessly join to form the novel, we meet Michelle, our narrator, whom we will not just come to root for, but … Continue reading
Luminarium by Alex Shakar (A Review by Randy Brzoska)
SoHo Press $16/432 pages It seems fitting that Alex Shakar would open his novel, Luminarium, with an invitation. Not your garden variety party invitation, mind you. Something a bit more oblique, less straightforward. But an invitation nonetheless. Picture yourself stepping … Continue reading
Jeanette by Joe Simpson Walker (A Review by Martin Macaulay)
Chomu Press $17/408 pages ‘Jeanette, is something the matter?’ In Joe Simpson Walker’s novel, people have a habit of asking Jeanette Hesketh ‘What’s the matter?’ Her parents, her teacher, her neighbours, her is-he-isn’t-he boyfriend – they all want to get … Continue reading
The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals by Rae Bryant (A Review by Thomas Michael Duncan)
Patasola Press $14 Remember the last time you woke up after a one-night stand and chewed your own arm off so you could sneak out without waking the semi-stranger sleeping next to you? No? What do you mean, that’s never … Continue reading
The Mutation of Fortune by Erica Adams (A Review by David Atkinson)
The Green Lantern Press $20 The Mutation of Fortune is not an easy book to get a fix on. The stories are too fluid to be easily grasped for quick summary. The ground beneath the reader’s feet shifts too rapidly … Continue reading
The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert (A Review by Dawn West)
Unbridled Books 272 pages, $24.95 Lies have a way of revealing truth. Motives. Fears. Obsessions. And aren’t writers the most fabulous liars? Great fiction is, in a sense, a series of fantastical lies spun into a gold-threaded web that somehow … Continue reading
Black Hole Blues By Patrick Wensink (A Review By P. Jonas Bekker)
Lazy Fascist Press $10.95 After reading Sex dungeon for sale, Patrick Wensink’s debut story collection that came out in Eraserhead Press’ New Bizarro Author Series I decided he could (and should) write a very good novel if he would just … Continue reading
The Iguana Complex by Darby Larson (A Review By Joseph Michael Owens)
Mud Luscious Press Despite what you may have heard, Darby Larson is a lyricist. He might be the Eminem of prose fiction, but probably not. Perhaps he’s more like Sage Francis or one of the guys from Definitive Jux, but … Continue reading
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive By Christopher Boucher (A Review By David Atkinson)
Melville House Press 208 pgs, $11.95 Having been born in the middle seventies to parents who owned a VW Beetle, I admit to being confused when I first picked up How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by Christopher Boucher. I … Continue reading
Short Bus By Brian Allen Carr (A Review By Sal Pane)
Texas A&M University Press $22.95 My first encounter with Brian Allen Carr was over the internet.  HTMLGIANT had just linked to this long diatribe I’d written about a semi-obscure video game from the 1990’s. I checked the comments section hourly, … Continue reading
Hector and the Search for Happiness By Francois Lelord (A Review By Rebecca Leece)
Gallic Books £6.99 Hector is a French psychiatrist who is dissatisfied because he’s not able to make people happy. He decides to look into matters by going on a trip around the world to observe what makes people happy—or unhappy. … Continue reading