Category: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

A review of Thine by Kate Partridge

Who we are and what will happen in the future is a notion that is always evolving in her work. She explores what it is to be an individual existing among so many people and the vastness and inspiration of nature and art. And Kate Partridge questions everything, especially decisions and actions.

A review of Time Taken: New and Selected Works by Les Wicks

A poetic journeyman and warrior whose work in writing and community throughout his life crisscrosses the globe. His beautiful new book Time Taken – New & Selected is a compendium of that life, full of treasures – wisdom, observations and raw evocations of the man himself.

A review of Dancing Dots by Brenda Eldridge

There are poems in this collection that describes events which many of us experience like waking at 3.00 am and being unable to go back to sleep, or being super tired after looking after children or admiring a fancy car that we never could afford. Empathy, love, compassion and wishes are also themes in this collection.

A review of The Hurricane Book by Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones

Acevedo-Quiñones includes family trees and freely admits that some of her facts are speculation, sometimes pieced together from “drunken spill sessions,” hearsay, half-remembered conversations. “Secrets are our family members, too,” after all, as she wisely points out in the vignette, “Secreto.”

Conjuring the Artist: A review of The Daughter of Man by L.J. Sysko

L.J. Sysko’s Daughter of Man is an exquisite dance in which form, function, image, and metaphor shape a discernible allegory of embodied personae. And while these speakers delight the reader with a variety of references to pop culture, they also serve as reminders of our shared historical narratives, ones we cannot let slip from our cultural memories.

A Predictable Loop: A review of If I See You Again Tomorrow by Robbie Couch

Stories focusing on time travel, or repetitive time travel, have always been spaces to explore the same experience in new ways. Like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, time loop narratives afford the characters, trapped for whatever reason, to try out new choices, new dialogue, and new interactions all in service of unraveling the loop and returning to the timestream they left.

A review of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject by Jared Harél

Harél searches for joy with the recognition of how much we are up against in the world. His has a willingness to see sharply the challenges and obstacles that are often devastatingly difficult to understand—to admit joy through inquiry and truth. If we do not see clearly, we are victims of magical thinking, wholly unprepared for those inevitable struggles and painful circumstances that are unavoidable.

A review of Serengotti by Eugen Bacon

Ch’anzu’s narrative arc drives the novel forward, as does a mystery that begins to unfold in the the strange confines of the dreamlike village. Through this story, Ch’anzu begins to explore hir own background, trauma and ghosts, that become part of the app being created, self-reflexively looping back to the creative unfolding that the reader is experiencing. 

A review of A Gilded Drowning Pool by Cecelia Tichi

As our detective duo uncovers new facts, and tangos with a decidedly subpar and self-serving police chief, their position in society and ability to move through the world unencumbered becomes even more important. Like wealthy daughter-of-a-lawyer Nancy Drew, their bold moves and demanding lines of questioning are only possible because they have the resources and status to back them up.