There’s something special about finding within a book ourselves, to see pieces of us reflected back to us on a page; there’s something special, too, about getting a peek into a world that feels far removed from our every day, about an escape that teaches us something about someone fully unlike ourselves. For me, Impossible bridged this line between selfishness and empathy, between the joy at shared experience and the curiosity at learning about someone who’s nothing like I am.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of Fragmentation and Volta by Paul Ilechko
The collection may end with the word “home” but that word is followed by an ellipsis, that punctuation mark which means that something has been left out. Here at the end, it alludes not only to the contents being fragmentary but to the whole collection itself being a fragment. The book itself is a border, a liminal space inviting everything unsaid to gather around it.
A review of Twelve Days From Transfer by Eleanor Kedney
This collection is wonderfully vast with its symbolism and imagery that will surely challenge readers to think about infertility differently. Kedney’s intention of her work being a vessel for other woman to understand infertility’s emotional and psychological impact is enlightening, especially as I am a young woman in her twenties—infertility hasn’t crossed my mind yet
A review of The Brittle Age by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
Moving from present to past with slim reflective passages, the novel examines more than individual responses to violence; it investigates cultural dissonance and our innate need to place blame on ourselves or the other, whoever that may be, and sometimes it’s us in an earlier life. A powerful examination of memory, resilience, reckoning, and acceptance, Di Pietrantonio’s novel marries fact with fiction to create a novel driven by secrets that must be relinquished and failings that must be acknowledged. It’s about honesty and truth.
A review of Ferryman: The life and deathwork of Ephraim Finch
Ephraim’s own journey to self-discovery is itself a terrific story, but what really makes Ferryman stand out is the silky, almost surreal quality of Katia Ariel’s writing. Ariel leans into the complexity of biography, its subjectivity, the interpretations perspectives, and gaps, to create a delicate and complex portrait that feels true precisely because it doesn’t connect every dot.
A review of Elis – Irish Call Girl by Anna Rajmon
Rajmon is as sharp and thoughtful as she is hilarious – in telling her story, she misses nothing regarding her experience. The picture she paints of the Irish prostitution scene is a comprehensive and complex one – from how accommodation is obtained, to how advertising is organized, to how meetings are arranged, to how travel from location to location is organized, to the power dynamics between sex workers, ‘clients’ and ‘agencies’ (‘pimps’ would be a more accurate term) – Rajmon lays it all out in black-and-white.
A Thousand Splendid Suns: A Multigeneration Story Unlike Pachinko or One Hundred Years of Solitude
Although traditional readers might classify the 2007 work as historical fiction given its backdrop of the Soviet-Afghan war in Kabul, the work is anything but your run-of-the-mill war novel. Through a mother-daughter story that focuses neither on a mother nor on her successive kin, Hosseini crafts a compelling narrative spanning generations that makes you question everything you thought you knew about a multigenerational (multigen) story.
A review of Unruly Tree by Leslie Ullman
And only a poet blessed with imagination and a solid understanding of poetics could embark on a project such as Leslie Ullman has devised here. Using “Oblique Strategies” as a basis for a disciplined exploration of the boundless possibilities of creative interpretation, she has produced a series of informed, entertaining and highly individual poems.
A review of Exit Zero by Marie-Helene Bertino
This is no ordinary collection. The Bertino omnibus features a Guignol-esque cast of characters readers will readily recognize because, flights of abstruse and absurd fancy aside, they abide and strive, hungry ducklings all, within each of us.
Maya in the Zen Forest: A review of The Forest I Know By Kala Ramesh
The “forest” of the forest i know is essentially a metaphorical Zen forest where the poet learns life’s trust as well as its tedium. She humorously notes the many gurus along herpath and their lack of utility in her enlightenment. In Zen, a master is not necessary to experience satori, which is a sudden realization into the human experience. In this practice, the master pulls punches and jokes to encourage enlightenment.