Category: Literary Fiction Reviews

New giveaway!

We have a copy of Moonstone Hero by David Sklar to give away!

To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of October from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!

A review of The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

But don’t read Hutch for the plot, read it for the language–seductive, entertaining and leading readers wonderfully astray. Insert your own line breaks and it can at times read like poetry, or a game of word pick up sticks. A throw away character is “a wonky Christian philanthropist—now a resident of Quebec.” The effect of Gunty’s linguistic pile ons are like a Wes Anderson movie.

Great new giveaway

We have a copy of The Absurd Rules of Life by Raul Gallardo Flores to give away!

To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of September from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!

A review of The Circle That Fits by Kevin Lichty

In a vignette-based narrative that takes us from Daniel’s childhood through early adulthood, we find moments of surrealism amid vivid violence within a delicate, rhythmic language that supports the wonder and naivety of the narrator. Daniel’s first circle is drawn by his father, a literal circle in the soil his father says is “all the room you have now” and forms a boundary on his grief after his mother leaves the family.

New giveaway!

We have a copy of Valley of Shadows by Rudy Ruiz to give away!

To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of September from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!

A review of Pentimento by Daniel Ionita

There are angels, demons, Death with a capital D, a plot against Santa Claus, and potato salad, all playing off one another with exuberance. Though occasionally confronting, Pentimento is a charming, inventive, smart and slightly audacious collection that will delight all but the most squeamish readers.  

A review of In The Roar of the Machine by Zheng Xiaoqiong

The poet skilfully describes how youth and dreams are lost quickly as the result of hard work, becoming part of the machine: “I see myself resembling this cast iron.”  Iron is in her hands, in her mind, in her verses, iron controls her life.  Anonymity, monotony, boredom, pain and exploitation are observed with poetic care; politics into poetry.    

New giveaway!


We have a copy of Relentless by AViVA to give away!

To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of August from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!

A review of Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters by Maya Sonenberg

As the reader gets into the stories, the fairytale nature of their shortcomings likewise becomes clear, giving these stories an air of fable – not a moral lesson so much as an insight into human frailties and failings, both mothers and their offspring, merely two sides of the same coin; a parade of characters who come up short.