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.”
Tag: fiction
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 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.
Murder, Mountain Magic, and Embracing the Weird, A Review of Alisa Alering’s Smothermoss
Alisa Alering’s debut novel Smothermoss absorbed me like a fog. Alering grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania where this book is set. From the opening pages, I felt completely immersed in the world of the mountain—its rhythms, sounds, and inexplicable mysteries.
Double Vision: A review of Sun Eye Moon Eye by Vincent Czyz
While there is wonderful word work throughout, Czyz’s prose really sparkles here. Like the “returnal” James Joyce, Czyz leads his readers on a merry chase through myth, literature, and art history.
Shifting Perceptions: A Review of Apparitions by Sybil Baker
What is true? What is not? The protagonist, Simone, arrives in Istanbul with her friend, Agnes. The city, partly European and partly Asian, hints at the dichotomies in Simone’s life and the fusion and confusion she encounters.
A review of Lucky by Jane Smiley
Smiley’s underlying theme, however, is the precariousness of this immortality. While presenting Jodie’s maturation as a woman and artist, she quietly notes some major historic events of the passing era.
A review of The Leaves by Jacqueline Rule
Jacqueline Rule makes good use of her legal experience in Luke’s story, which is tragic, spotlighting just how broken the foster system he ends up cycling through is, or how brutal the legal detention system, and the way in which it traumatises rather than helps the young people caught in it.
A review of Helens: Not Necessarily About Sex by by Matthew Louis Kalash
This is writing, literary fiction, at its most realized potential. In the title story, ‘Helens,’ an academic (no doubt a même of the author himself), who is a college history instructor, sets the stage by discussing, at fascinating length, the Trojan War. Paris and Menelaus and Helen.
A review of Perfume by Patrick Süskind
Süskind’s dark taste in comedy and clever use of logic permeate every page. Jean-Baptiste’s skill as a perfumer making camouflage, shadowing and eventually murder all possible with a few drops of a home-made fragrance. Like all superhero films or books one fantasises of having said superpower and the fantastical, god-like things one could do with it.