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Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://compulsivereader.com
Volume 24, Issue 1, 1 January 2022
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IN THIS ISSUE
New Reviews at Compulsive Reader
Literary News
Competition News
Sponsored By
Coming soon
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Hello readers. Happy new year! I hope you all had a relaxing and safe (!) break. Here is the latest batch of reviews and interviews:
A review of Make For Higher Ground by Diane Lee Moomey
A gorgeous collection full of sky and light, these poems tell stories that remember, long for, miss and sustain love. Importantly, there is nothing saccharin here. Indeed, the last poem ends ominously, “Making coffee, breaking camp—/we do this well together,/but whitecaps, winds and lowered skies; promise heavy weather.” And that’s the point. Higher ground is not a panacea; it isn’t even a place. It is a way of being in the world that Moomey gently urges in this compelling collection. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/31/a-review-of-make-for-higher-ground-by-diane-lee-moomey/
A review of Tell Me How You Got Here by Emily Franklin
Emily Franklin’s debut poetry collection Tell Me How You Got Here is an emotional exploration of the ways family and possessions become embedded in our consciousness, perhaps even lodged in our DNA. Our attempts to soothe the pain of inherited memories by “forgetting, mottling as salve/for the soul” are often fruitless because the “potholes of memory” make erasure impossible. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/25/a-review-of-tell-me-how-you-got-here%E2%80%A8-by-emily-franklin/
A review of Coolest American Stories 2022 edited by Mark Wish and Elizabeth Coffey
One of the coolest things about the thirteen stories that make up this collection and makes them legitimate contenders for the title is the sense of revelation that each embodies, whether it’s a poignant insight into love or suicide or your “otherness,” or even just the quotidian awareness of being hungry after watching a lion bite off your mob boss’s head, as in S.A. Cosby’s hilarious noir, “Pantera Rex.” Each of these stories has its moment, some more subtle than others, some more dire. (Look no further than the first story, Lori D. Johnson’s “Shepherd’s Hell,” if you’re looking for “dire.”)
Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/23/a-review-of-coolest-american-stories-2022-edited-by-mark-wish-and-elizabeth-coffey/
A review of Sister Séance by Aimee Parkison
Parkison’s novel is quite chilling even with its slow buildup. The story’s pace means every chapter ends with either some new revelation or some progression towards something worse, and the rotating perspectives means creates dramatic irony that pays off with each new chapter. This allows the story to earn its more fantastic moments, as the realistic, recognizable horror permits for it’s absolutely wild climax.
Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/22/a-review-of-sister-seance-by-aimee-parkison/
A review of Bed by Elizabeth Metzger
Within the spare and taut words, the compact lines that the author fashions in her poetry are found grief, love, intimacy, spirituality, death, yet an emotional distance and mystery (lots of it). In fact, it is mystery that has kept this reviewer off-balance throughout the book, as in the lines: “Wind from nowhere / It did not get up / from its snoring carriage / or offer me a bottled / sense of the near future.” Her lines are simple, their meaning complex. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/19/a-review-of-bed-by-elizabeth-metzger/
A review of The Breath by Cindy Savett
Savett’s incantations are strident and introduce recurrent images (clay, sparrow, dirt, twin). They function stylistically like the choral strophe and antistrophe of Ancient Greek tragedies, repeating phrases in a histrionic voice. As such, they deepen the tone of devastation and misfortune. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/18/a-review-of-the-breath-by-cindy-savett/
An interview with Gary Slaughter
The author of WWII POWs in America and Abroad talks about why he wrote his book, the often-overlooked perspectives of the 6 million people held in prison camps in the U.S. and around the world between 1939 and 1945, about what life was like for an imprisoned officer, about growing up in Owosso during WWII, classic movies, collaborating with his wife, and lots more. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/17/an-interview-with-gary-slaughter/
Sumptuous Scrupulousness: A review of Hesitancies by Sanjeev Sethi
In “seclusiveness” he treats his bones of mundane aches and fills them “with the calm of calcium.” It is this myriad understanding of human hesitancies with all its aftermaths that are grappled by Sethi in a highly intellectual manner in this magnificent collection of poems that makes this book a treasure for the connoisseurs of poetry. A reader of this volume, if he or she makes the effort to go into the interstices of Sethi’s poetry, will experience time-capsules of life and do so in a more profound way that he or she has ever imagined.
Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/15/sumptuous-scrupulousness-a-review-of-hesitancies-by-sanjeev-sethi/
A review of The Asparagus Wars by Carol Major
Compelled by a strong identification with Major’s experience of marriage and motherhood and a familiarity with the power structures that discriminated against her – remembering the marginalisation I’d faced as a single woman raising a child on my own – I came to the gradual understanding that my interaction with her work was almost wholly personal. My instinctive response to The Asparagus Wars, Major’s powerful recounts of gendered inequality, made it undesirable that I interact with the book in any other way. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/13/a-review-of-the-asparagus-wars-by-carol-major/
A review of Knives on a Table by Peter Mladinic
This collection is a plethora of mixed emotions….Those of love, loss, living, and dying. Mladinic is a brilliant composer of the written word, of describing a feeling, an incident, a thought, and with the finesse of a fine master who cares deeply for his subjects. Add a bit of sensuality and desire, the frailty of the human mind and of human behavior, and the cruelty of death, and one has a window into the world of Mladinic’s psyche and his free verse poetry. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/11/a-review-of-knives-on-a-table-by-peter-mladinic/
Unlocking the Door of Consciousness: A Conversation with Clifford Garstang about his newest novel, Oliver’s Travels
The author of Oliver’s Travels talks about his new book and his unique narrative style(s) and voices, his characters and their complex journeys, the books themes, his new work-in-progress, the joy of travel, and lots more. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/07/unlocking-the-door-of-consciousness-a-conversation-with-clifford-garstang-about-his-newest-novel-olivers-travels/
A review of April on Paris Street by Anna Dowdall
April on Paris Street has several areas of interest: the charms of Paris and Montreal; the varied work of a private investigator; the dark, dangerous world in which we live, and above all, the importance of staying connected to our families, whether they be blood relatives or “intentional families” of friends. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/04/a-review-of-april-on-paris-street-by-anna-dowdall/
A review of Lost, Hurt or in Transit Beautiful by Rohan Chhetri
No matter where you live, Lost, Hurt or In Transit Beautiful will stir your senses and grip your imagination. It will invoke in your mind’s eye, unseen images of the land simmering at the foothills of the eastern Himalayas. It will strike a chord of compassion for what human beings endure and for what they pass on to posterity. Chhetri’s poems are an act of courage, a baring of the soul, written from the depth of his experiences, some as enigmatic as the title of the book itself. Read more: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/12/03/a-review-of-lost-hurt-or-in-transit-beautiful-by-rohan-chhetri/
All of the reviews and interviews listed above are available at The Compulsive Reader on the front page. Older reviews and interviews are kept indefinitely in our extensive (and growing) categorized archives (currently at 2,884, which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.
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LITERARY NEWS
In the literary news last month, Marjoleine Kars won the $75,000 Cundill History Prize, which is administered by McGill University to recognise “the book that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal,” for Blood on the River: a Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast (The New Press). The two runners-up are Rebecca Clifford’s Survivors: Children’s Lives after the Holocaust (Yale University Press) and Marie Favereau’s The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (Belknap Press of Harvard). Each receives a Recognition of Excellence Award of $10,000.
Merlin Sheldrake won the £25,000 (about $33,355) Royal Society Science Book Prize, which is intended to “promote the accessibility and joy of popular science writing,” for Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures.
Ely Percy’s Duck Feet was named Book of the Year by Scotland’s National Book Awards 2021. It also took the fiction category honors. The judges called the winning work “a rare thing in contemporary literature; a novel with heart and humor which is also a feat of language and style. A micro landscape of teenagehood painted masterfully in Scots, it nonetheless speaks to the universal. It enchanted the judging panel and we have no doubt it will enchant the world.” This year’s category winners also included Bleak: the mundane comedy by Roddy Murray (first book), A Tomb with a View by Peter Ross (nonfiction), Life Without Air by Daisy Lafarge (poetry), Monarchy, Dress and the Scottish Male Elite by Stuart Style (history), and more. Publisher of the year honors went to Canongate Books.
Adam Aitken won the 2021 Patrick White Literary Award, honouring an author who has “made a significant but inadequately recognized contribution to Australian literature.” Established by Patrick White with the proceeds of his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature, the award is worth A$15,000. Aitken is the author of several books of poetry, including Archipelago, shortlisted in 2018 for the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for poetry, and the 2016 autobiography 100 Letters Home, which was longlisted for the 2017 ALS Gold Medal. His forthcoming collection Revenants will be published in February (and we will of course be featuring it here). Check out my review of Adam’s wonderful memoir One Hundred Letters Home here: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/05/05/a-review-of-one-hundred-letters-home-by-adam-aitken/
The shortlist has been unveiled for the £10,000 Portico Prize for Literature, which “aims to celebrate the diversity of the North of England and to engage public interest in Northern stories, voices, and places.” the Bookseller. The winner will be named January 20. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Ghosted by Jenn Ashworth, Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan, Toto Among the Murderers by Sally J. Morgan, The Family Tree by Sairish Hussain, Sea State by Tabitha Lasley, and The Outsiders by James Corbett
Is Superman Circumcised? by Roy Schwartz “has cut through the competition to claim the 2021 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, earning a 51% share of the public vote,” the Bookseller reported, adding that the winning title, “an academic study on the Jewish origins of the iconic DC Comics character, flew faster than a speeding bullet to quickly grab the number one spot in the polls when the public vote was first announced in early November, a lead it never relinquished.”
Colm Tóibín has won the £40,000 2021 David Cohen Prize for Literature, which is awarded every other year and recognizes “a lifetime’s achievement in literature” by a writer from the U.K. or Ireland. Colm Tóibín is the author of 10 novels, including Brooklyn, The Master and The Magician (published in the U.S. in September by Scribner), and two collections of stories. He is Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. He is a vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature.
The 2021 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards winners have been announced and include, for fiction, The Labyrinth, Amanda Lohrey, Text Publishing, for Non-fiction The Stranger Artist: River: Lost Worlds of Early Australia, Grace Karskens, Allen & Unwin, and for PoetryThe Strangest Place, New and Selected Poems, Stephen Edgar, Black Pepper. For the full list, judges notes and a recording of the award ceremony can be found here: https://www.arts.gov.au/departmental-news/2021-prime-ministers-literary-awards-winners
Cecilia Knapp, playwright, novelist and the Young People’s Laureate for London, won the Ruth Rendell Award for “outstanding contribution to raising literacy levels in the U.K. over the last year,” the Bookseller reported. The prize was launched in 2016 by the National Literacy Trust and Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society in memory of Rendell. Knapp was praised for her “work delivering four residencies as part of the Young People’s Laureate for London program run by Spread the Word.
The winners of the 2021 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book and Astounding Award for Best New Writer were announcedat the 79th WorldCon–called DisCon III–in Washington, D.C. For Best Novel: Network Effect by Martha Wells (Tordotcom). Best Related Work: Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley (FSG) (check out my review of Headley’s Beowulf here: http://compulsivereader.com/2021/01/12/a-review-of-beowulf-a-new-translation-by-maria-dahvana-headley/ and interview with Headley for Newcastle Writers Festival’s Stories to You here: https://omny.fm/shows/newcastle-writers-festival/maria-dahvana-headley-beowulf. For the rest of the Hugos, visit: http://www.thehugoawards.org
Have a great Jan!
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COMPETITION NEWS
Congratulations to Karen Hittinger who won a copy of Out Front the Following Sea by Lea Angstman.
Congratulations to Laurie Blum who won a copy of The Adventurers Glossary by Joshua Glenn and Mark Kingwell.
Congratulations to Zoltan R. Almasi who won a copy of WW II POWs in America and Abroad: Astounding Facts about the Imprisonment of Military and Civilians During the War by Gary Slaughter.
Our new site giveaway is for a copy of Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line: “Florence Adler” and your postal address in the body of the email.
We also have a copy of The American Dream of Braven Young by Brooke Raybould to give away. To win send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “The American Dream” and your postal address in the body of the email.
Good luck, everyone!
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COMING SOON
We will shortly be featuring reviews of Morning Will Come by Billy Lombardo, The Other Life by Patrick Connors, Sleeping in a Murder of Crows by Elizabeth Metzger, Rain Violet by Ann Spier, A Girl Should Be by Ruth Latta, and lots more reviews and interviews.
Drop by The Compulsive Reader talks (see the widget on right-hand side of the site) to listen to our latest episode which features my interview with Charles Freyberg reading from and talking about his poetry book The Crumbling Mansion. Or drop by to listen directly here:https://anchor.fm/compulsivereader/episodes/Charles-Freyberg-on-The-Crumbling-Mansion-e1bnsog You can also subscribe to the show via iTunes and get updates automatically, straight to your favourite listening device. Find us under podcasts by searching for Compulsive Reader Talks. Then just click subscribe.
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(c) 2022 Magdalena Ball. Nothing in this newsletter may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher, however, reprint rights are readily available. Please feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety.
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