Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 27, Issue 7, 1 July 2025

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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. Here is the latest batch of reviews and interviews:

A review of The Pull of the Moon by Pip Smith

There is a magical quality to the island and the sounds, with all of its seasonal and tonal changes – the turtle and crab hatchings and migrations, the moon phases that make up the section headings, and the way in which the perspectives move around the island. Smith’s writing is poetic and she doesn’t tie everything up into a neat parcel. Instead she allows the characters to develop against the backdrop of an unfolding crisis that is very much a real one in our world. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/29/a-review-of-the-pull-of-the-moon-by-pip-smith/

A review of Men Behaving Badly and The Corona Verses by Tim O’Leary

With both Men Behaving Badly and The Corona Verses, both published by Rare Bird Books, Tim O’Leary proves himself a master of the short form, unafraid to wade into messy, uncomfortable terrain with equal parts irreverence and empathy. These aren’t just stories about individual characters—they’re honest reflections of a country in flux, where comedy and tragedy often sit side by side. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/26/a-review-of-men-behaving-badly-and-the-corona-verses-by-tim-oleary/

A review of The Three Devils by William Luvaas

What an amazing collection. The best advice I can give a potential reader: pour a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, or even better, both, sit in a dark room with only one light on to illuminate the pages, and sit in the most comfortable chair you have. Prepare to stay awhile. You won’t want to stop. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/25/a-review-of-the-three-devils-by-william-luvaas/

A review of Down River with Li Po by Karen Pierce Gonzalez

Engaging the emotions that emanate through Li Po’s work, and with delicate strokes, Gonzalez packs maximum impact into snapshots of the natural world. ‘Pink yarrow garden’ and ‘patchwork planets’. Traversing the rural and the urban, the seen and the suggested. Lotus flowers, urban streets and vast mountains. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/22/a-review-of-down-river-with-li-po-by-karen-pierce-gonzalez/

A review of Temporary Beast by Joanna Solfrian

The eclectic mix of suburban memories and contemporary city scenes, meditations on motherhood, poignant encounters interspersed with a shorter clip of found poetry; ars poetica adds levity before Temporary Beast resurfaces in longer form poems delving primarily into the specificity of memories. Her sister crashes the Camry outside the family home, the names of neighbors and the local pharmacist meander Solfrian’s poems and emotions surrounding her mother’s death. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/11/a-review-of-one-little-goat-by-dara-horn-and-theo-ellsworth/

A Review of Nervosities by John Madera

Madera’s book emphasizes a different kind of narrative pilgrim. Instead of a traveler headed out in search of a story, as Phil Cousineau writes in The Art of Pilgrimage: the journey “as nature’s pattern of regeneration, a journey consisting of departure, arrival, and return,” Madera’s narrators grapple with a perpetual sense of being adrift and often exhausted and burnt by the post-industrial world. These stories are about diasporas, transformations, fragmentations, and layers of meaning. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/11/a-review-of-one-little-goat-by-dara-horn-and-theo-ellsworth/

Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift Edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty

The poem diverges from the wistful, reflective joy of the wedding to the speaker’s own more volatile personal history, contrasting the innocence of the little girl singing karaoke and her own “vanilla ice cream” sweet girlhood. The speaker’s “I” creates a new emotional tenor for the poem, and the use of polysyndeton to connect clauses blurs time, creating one rich, expansive moment that contains the feelings of the speaker’s past, the reality of her present, the little girl’s identification, and Swift’s artistic influence, not to mention the reader’s own emotional resonance with the poem itself. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/13/invisible-strings-113-poets-respond-to-the-songs-of-taylor-swift-edited-by-kristie-frederick-daugherty/

A review of One Little Goat by Dara Horn and Theo Ellsworth

This collaboration with Theo Ellsworth is unique. Ellsworth’s style is reminiscent of R. Crumb, the underground comics pioneer whose iconic black-and-white cross-hatching and the exaggerated features of his character are instantly recognizable. Combined with Dara Horn’s erudition, the comic book style makes the ancient story seem somehow more relevant and more subversive. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/11/a-review-of-one-little-goat-by-dara-horn-and-theo-ellsworth/

An interview with Joshua Vigil

The author of Bastardland talks about his latest book, his writing habits, the satisfaction of writing, social media, on unsettling a reader, the joys of publication, and more.

A review of A Prague Flâneur by Vítězslav Nezval

The streets, bridges, buildings, and cafés “where Prague lives” provide a wealth of stimuli to which Nezval responds with a catalogue of memories. His Prague is like the site of an archaeological dig whose layers expose various periods of personal history. It also is the site of shops whose windows display goods that take on hallucinatory appearances, and the setting for chance meetings with strange characters and events that touch on the uncanny. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/07/a-review-of-a-prague-flaneur-by-vitezslav-nezval/

A review of Informed by Alison Stone

The poems are raw and pull the curtains back to reveal intimate family dynamics and heartbreak. Death was real and claimed a young neighbor and she wonders about an afterlife and “starved myself to safety, transcendence”. With no real example of how to live, she had to “transcend”, “starve”, develop an eating disorder as a way to survive the death and destruction around her that was felt and yet hidden, unspoken, unacknowledged: “under tablecloths,/the makeup”, stashed in the “trunk of a new car”. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/04/a-review-of-informed-by-alison-stone-2/

The Art of Connections: Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (2001) & Other Wedding Movies

Hemant has a groom’s procession, arriving on a horse; and, of course, the bride is beautiful. It rains, torrential rain (the monsoon that follows summer)—and a long-awaited young man arrives, Umang (Jas Arora), and exchanges glances with Ria. The rain further washes away formality and pretense. Everybody dances. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/02/the-art-of-connections-mira-nairs-monsoon-wedding-2001-other-wedding-movies/

A review of The Ballad of Falling Rock by Jordan Dotson

The Ballad of Falling Rock is a stunning book that follows at least four generations of a family in the Appalachian region near Virginia and in tiny towns and forests. If you are a Hemingway fan, this one’s not for you. Or, if you are a Hemingway fan but maintain an open mind, you can read it and set yourself on a path thick with adjectives. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/06/02/a-review-of-the-ballad-of-falling-rock-by-jordan-dotson/

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 categorised archives (currently at 3,544) which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.

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LITERARY NEWS

In the news this month, the winners of the IndieReader Discovery Awards, sponsored by IndieReader, have been announced. Winners in the many categories can be seen here. The winners of the fiction and nonfiction categories are: Fiction: First Place: The Last Whaler by Cynthia Reeves, Nonfiction: First Place: Property of the Revolution: From a Cuban Barrio to a New Hampshire Mill Town by Ana Hebra Flaster

Rosie Rowell won the Women’s Prize Trust Discoveries Prize for Down by the Stryth. Curtis Brown Creative and Curtis Brown literary agency partner with the Women’s Prize Trust and Audible to run Discoveries, a writing development award and program for unpublished women writers. As winner, Rowell receives an offer of representation by Curtis Brown (she has signed with Jess Molloy, Curtis Brown literary agent and Discoveries 2025 judge), a cash prize of £5,000, and a place on a Curtis Brown Creative six-week online course. In July, she will also join CBC’s specially designed two-week Discoveries Writing Development course alongside the other 15 writers longlisted for Discoveries 2025. Additionally, Jac Felipez has been named this year’s Discoveries Scholar, winning a place on CBC’s flagship three-month Writing Your Novel course, worth £1,900 to further develop her work-in-progress: A Long Ways from Home.

The New York Historical (formerly the New-York Historical Society) has awarded the $10,000 2025 Children’s History Book Prize to A Two-Placed Heart by Doan Phuong Nguyen (Lee & Low Books). The award is given annually to “the best American history book for middle readers ages 9-12, fiction or nonfiction.”

Winners have been selected for the James Tait Black Prizes in fiction and biography, which have been presented by the University of Edinburgh since 1919. My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison, has won the fiction prize, and My Great Arab Melancholy by Lamia Ziadé, translated by Emma Ramadan, has won the biography prize. The authors and translators share in the £10,000 prize in each category. This is the first time that both prizes have been awarded to translated works and only the second time a writer and translator have been awarded a prize together in the history of the awards. The prizes were opened to translations in 2021.

The Women’s Prize Trust has awarded the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award, a special literary honour marking the 30th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and funded by Bukhman Philanthropies, to Bernardine Evaristo to recognize her “body of work, her transformative impact on literature and her unwavering dedication to uplifting under-represented voices across the cultural landscape.” Evaristo will receive £100,000 and a special sculpture named “Thoughtful” by Caroline Russell.

Abi Daré won the inaugural £10,000 Climate Fiction Prize, which celebrates the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis, for And So I Roar.

Winners have been named for the 2025 Jhalak Prize, which celebrates books by writers of color in the U.K. and Ireland. The Guardian reported that N.S. Nuseibeh’s Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman, a “timely” and “timeless” essay collection, took the prose award, with Mimi Khalvati’s Collected Poems winning the inaugural poetry prize and the children’s and YA honours going to Nathanael Lessore for King of Nothing. Each of the winners receives £1,000.

Shortlists have been released for this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, which “celebrates crime fiction at its very best” by U.K. and Irish authors, as well as the McDermid Debut Award for new writers. The prize is run by Harrogate International Festivals and sponsored by T&R Theakston. A public vote is now open. The winners will be revealed July 17, on opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. The winner of the Novel of the Year Award receives £3,000 and an engraved oak beer cask, hand-carved by one of Britain’s last coopers from Theakston’s Brewery. This year’s Novel of the Year shortlisted titles are: The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre, The Mercy Chair by M.W. Craven, The Last Word by Elly Griffiths, Hunted by Abir Mukherjee, Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney, and All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker. For the full list visit: https://www.harrogatetheakstoncrimeaward.com/

The winners of 2025 Nebula Awards, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, were announced on Saturday at the 60th annual Nebula Awards Ceremony, in Kansas City, Mo.: Novel: Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (DAW), Novella: The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock), Novelette: Negative, Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being by A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld 11/24), Short Story: “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld 2/24), Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction: The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts by Vanessa Ricci-Thode (self-published), Game Writing: A Death in Hyperspace by Stewart C Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J. Kim, Sara S. Messenger, Jingjing Xiao, Natalia Theodoridou, M. Darusha Wehm, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Infomancy.net), and Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Dune: Part Two by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve (Warner Bros.)

Two books are sharing the Plutarch Award for the Best Biography of 2024, sponsored by Biographers International Organization. The winners will share the $3,000 prize. The winning titles are Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Harper).

The Women’s Prize Trust has awarded the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award, a special literary honor marking the 30th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and funded by Bukhman Philanthropies, to Bernardine Evaristo to recognize her “body of work, her transformative impact on literature and her unwavering dedication to uplifting under-represented voices across the cultural landscape.” Evaristo will receive £100,000 and a special sculpture named “Thoughtful” by Caroline Russell, to be presented on June 12 at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in London, along with the winners of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation has chosen David Means as the winner of the 2025 PEN/Bernard and Ann Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, which recognises writers who have demonstrated exceptional achievement in the short story form. Means will be honoured at the annual PEN/Malamud Award Ceremony, held in partnership with American University, in December.

The shortlist for the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award has been selected and includes: Chinese Postman (Brian Castro, Giramondo), Theory & Practice (Michelle de Kretser, Text). Dirt Poor Islanders (Winnie Dunn, Hachette), Compassion (Julie Janson, Magabala), Ghost Cities (Siang Lu, UQP), and Highway 13 (Fiona McFarlane, A&U). Each shortlisted author receives $5000, and the 2025 winner will receive a further $60,000. Last year’s winner was Alexis Wright for her novel Praiseworthy (Giramondo). The 2025 winner will be announced on 24 July 2025.

The shortlists for the 2025 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards have been announced. This year, the awards have a total prize pool of $120,000 and four new categories.The new categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young adult will ‘showcase the work of more Western Australian authors and publishers’, and Book of the Year ($15,000) will be a ‘winner of winners’ chosen from the winning category titles. The shortlisted books in each category can be found here: https://slwa.wa.gov.au/news/2025-premiers-book-awards-shortlist-announced

Have a great month.

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Nancy Payette who won a copy of Measure of Devotion by Nell Joslin.

Congratulations to Sandy Henry who won a copy of The Heart is Meat: An 80s Memoir by Michael Backus.

Our new giveaway is for a copy of Tiny Vices by Linda Dahl. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Tiny Vices” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

We also have a copy of The Heart of the Advocate by Angela Costi. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “The Heart of the Advocate” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

Good luck!

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