As is evident in her line about her mother telling her through her tears that she loves what her daughter’s done with her hair, Brimhall has a delightfully sly sense of humor. It’s on display in poems like “Admissions Essay” (“I could have been valedictorian if the metrics / were ardor and potential for transformation”), “Ode to Oxytocin at a Distance,” “I Would Do Anything for Love but I Won’t” (“cook lobster.
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
A review of The Burrow by Melanie Cheng
Cheng’s writing is so lovely, and her insights so acute, that even the slow chapters remain engaging. Her figurative language is especially striking. When Amy drifts into sleep, “better days flash, in orange hues, behind her lids.” Pauline reflects that, when one is young, “death [is] something to be teased and taunted, unseen and remote, like a hibernating animal.”
A Review of The Golden Land by Elizabeth Shick
Shick expertly pulls us into Yangon life and culture through glimpses of people, streets, food vendors, colorful gardens, and ancient temples. As Etta strolls through a working-class neighborhood, she notes how “makeshift shacks are stacked one upon the other like the slipper seashells I used to collect at the beach as a child,” then passes a man who “stands in front of his shack, his longyi hiked up to his groin as he lathers soap over his bare chest and legs.”
A review of The Bone Picker by Devon Mihesuah
While this book is a clear indication that Choctaws also like to tell each other scary stories, the implication of that line is that Choctaws have many stories. But when these narratives diverge from Anglo-European expectations, settlers and their descendants almost immediately force them into gothic or horror storytelling structures.
A review of Foreign Attachments by Roslyn McFarland
Foreign Attachments is beautifully written, with a great attention to detail and obvious research that brings the characters to life. Jean Rhys is a particularly interesting and tragic character in this rendition with plenty of intrigue left to the reader’s imagination, though I dare anyone to read Foreign Attachments and not give into the temptation to not only begin looking closer at Stella Bowen’s paintings but also exploring Rhys’ story and the work, not so well read these days, of Ford Madox Ford.
A review of Zeke Borshellac by James Damis
The book is a lurid purple-prosed comic masterpiece. I have not had as much pleasure reading a deep dense novel like this since The Sot-Weed Factor, A Confederacy of Dunces, Tristam Shandy, Quixote, Auto-da-fé, Joy Williams. The lietmotif of the book is wretched comic human excess. And ambition. And language! Borshellac begins his self-transformation as a stowaway on a fishing vessel, where he ineffectually disguises himself as a man-sized perch, lolling among the mountainous heaps of fresh-caught fish.
A review of Beware the Tall Grass by Ellen Birkett Morris
Beware the Tall Grass reads like poetic, creative nonfiction, creating a beautiful and believable story that leaves the reader satisfied yet in wonder about what we know and don’t know about the mysteries of life and death. This novel is a compelling read.
A review of The Thirty-One Legs of Vladimir Putin by PS Cottier and NG Hartland
Each lookalike has his own particular story which is partly informed by location and partly by circumstance. The pieces appear quite distinct but they begin to overlap as the book progresses, forming a coherent whole that twists back on itself in uncomfortable ways. The end result is an overarcing pattern that creates a bigger story, linked not just by the missing character of Putin but also by the way the characters, their settings, and the story’s time progression intersect.
A review of Juice by Tim Winton
There has been much made of Juice being a departure for Winton and there’s no denying that this is a different setting to most of his work: the small towns of present day Western Australia. This is set in the ravaged future, but the writing is classic Winton. The location does seem to still be WA, with a rich, if tortured, setting with human relationships at its core. These are mostly familial: a boy and his mother, a child and her carer, two parents and a young child – all recognisable and all rich with the complexities of those relations under the duress of environmental disaster.
A review of Boysgirls by Katie Farris
Farris successfully grabs onto the reader and throwing them into the center of the action, along the meta, fourth-wall breaking asides that forces the readers to interact and not just observe. These unnamed characters who are often referred to their functions have broken through those constraining words. These forms created new life, new beings, and new meanings to what literal hybrid forms as Farris proves new literature should be just as bold as she demonstrated.