Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 27, Issue 10, 1 Oct 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:

BOOK REVIEWS, POETRY REVIEWS

A review of Alighting in Time by Lynne Wycherley

As her poetry and prose articles indicate, she is concerned about the little-known risks of the wireless boom and works to build awareness of the dangers. While her recurrent theme is the threat posed by modernity to the rhythms and solace of nature, her poems are not overly didactic nor depressing. They are uplifting and also reader-friendly; she includes footnotes to explain potentially unfamiliar terms. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/28/a-review-of-alighting-in-time-by-lynne-wycherley/

Death and Desire: A review of Mother, Daughter, Augur by Mary Simmons

Often in this gorgeous collection, I found the theme of death to be that of decay: dead birds, dead spiders, pears rotting; the kind of death that winter brings. In the poem, “In the Small Hours,” Simmons writes of dead spiders, “their brittle petals,/their dull pigments/their spiders/in diapause, because in the belly/of the dead it is always winter.” Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/26/death-and-desire-a-review-of-mother-daughter-auger-by-mary-simmons/

A review of Burn by Barbara Hamby

Hamby’s ideas flow like a person talking to herself, and we get to listen in. Her free-association stream-of-consciousness is exactly the stuff of dreams, as alluded to earlier, so it’s no surprise that so many of the odes involve dreams. “Ode on the Rilke Metro Stop in the Paris of My Dreams” is one (“In this dream we’re in Paris, driving around in a car, / which is a nightmare…”). Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/24/a-review-of-burn-by-barbara-hamby/

A review of The Voice of Blood by Gabriela Rábago Palafox

The Voice of Blood is an eye opener. (A vein opener, too.) Read this book and you will fly with Quetzalcoatl, in a Cinco de Mayo replete with myth, fable, monsters, and current events. The illustrations by José Guadalupe Posada accompanying each story, are nothing short of outstanding: stark engravings, appropriately stylized, of winged creatures, witches at the stake, demons. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/22/a-review-of-the-voice-of-blood-by-gabriela-rabago-palafox/

A review of The Drop Off by David Stavanger

The Drop Off takes these notions of play, irreverence and art, and utilises the tools of poetry – redaction and silences, puns, the language of public discourse, rhythm and structure to lead the reader, almost by stealth, into sudden moments of intense vulnerability. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/20/a-review-of-the-drop-off-by-david-stavanger/

A review of Indifferent Cities by Ángel García

Indifferent Cities raises compelling questions about the nature of family, of generations, of how we may reach a point in our lives when, regardless of whether our parents are living or deceased, we become, psychically, parents to our own parents and perhaps also children to our own children. Indifferent Cities, in inspiring the reader to consider these paradoxes, is anything but indifferent. On the contrary, it is poignant. Read more:

Confronting Trauma with Resilience: an Interview with Molly Johnsen

Molly Johnsen talks about her debut poetry book, Everything Alive, her poetry journey, the devastating car accident that the book centres on, her use of dark humor, epilepsy, grief, trauma, parenting, love and lots more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/17/confronting-trauma-with-resilience-an-interview-with-molly-johnsen/

A review of A Stranger Comes to Town by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Schartz’s prose dazzles as we accompany Joe on his sleuthing. Early in the novel, he considers people seen from his apartment window: “Lots of people looked respectable, but weren’t, and how did I know this? From childhood, somehow. And what did respectable mean anyway? For all I knew I’d spent time in prison.” Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/16/a-review-of-a-stranger-comes-to-town-lynne-sharon-schwartz/

A review of Outliving Michael by Steven Reigns

There’s a great deal of nostalgia in Outliving Michael, of course, remembering a friend who died a quarter century ago, but Reigns is also remembering his own youth, with that same sweet nostalgia. Michael has gone shopping for jeans at the mall, the occasion for Reigns to make this observation about the immortality of youth. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/15/41687/

Cavalier Perspective: Last Essays 1952-1966 by André Breton

As we might expect, a wistful, retrospective tone runs through many of these pieces, sometimes subtly and under the surface, and sometimes quite explicitly. In one 1952 essay, “ ‘You Have the Floor, Young Seer of Things…’”, Breton laments his inability to appreciate the new trends in postwar painting and contrasts that with the enthusiasm he felt in his youth for new art. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/13/cavalier-perspective-last-essays-1952-1966-by-andre-breton/

A review of Daphne by Kristen Case, Blood Feather by Karla Kelsey, and Phantom Number: An Abecedarium for April by Spring Ulmer,

Each of the texts also explores the interrogation and violence of language. In Daphne, language is presented as violent, erotic, and philosophical. The text plays with and warps definitions (this is especially evident in the analysis of the words “ravish” and “tonic”) to reveal embedded power structures within the way we use language. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/11/a-review-of-daphne-by-kristen-case-blood-feather-by-karla-kelsey-and-phantom-number-an-abecedarium-for-april-by-spring-ulmer/

A review of The Peach King by Inga Simpson

Inga Simpson writes books for all ages, and I’ve loved many of her books for adults, but her new book, The Peach Tree, is one of those picture books will become a classic and be read and re-read, kept and handed down. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/09/a-review-of-the-peach-king-by-inga-simpson/

A review of What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Mullan

For me, the book resonates on a deeply personal level. Having studied Austen in graduate school, I’ve long been fascinated by the quiet radicalism beneath her polished surface. While she never staged open rebellion against Regency norms, her fiction hums with a subtle critique of its social constraints—expressed through irony, narrative silence, and the moral gravity of her heroines’ choices. Mullan illuminates this with expert precision, showing how Austen’s critical eye is woven into every level of her storytelling. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/09/a-review-of-what-matters-in-jane-austen-by-john-mullan/

A review of It Wasn’t Easy to Reach You by Daniel Meltz

In all, Daniel Meltz accomplished what he set out to do with his collection of poems: to love, be kind, forgive, keep growing, even as an adult, and to have a dry sense of humor no matter how many times life knocks you down. I applaud him on his sincere frankness, and his book is a testament to his life. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/08/a-review-of-it-wasnt-easy-to-reach-you-by-daniel-meltz/

A review of Count Luna by Alexander Lernet-Holenia

The influence of Dracula on both popular and literary culture goes on and on. That there are tons of awful movies out there, and many novels not worth mentioning, goes without saying. Yet every so often, a book comes along that is a true wonder. It glimmers with a unique identity while leaving little doubt as to its thematic pedigree. One such work is the Austrian poet Alexander Lernet-Holenia’s 1955 short novel Count Luna, which New Directions has released in a fine translation by Jane B. Greene. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/06/a-review-of-count-luna-by-alexander-lernet-holenia/

A review of Through the Trapdoor by Kavita Ivy Nandan

Through the Trapdoor is full of such vivid characterisation, engaging dialogue and enjoyable plotlines around overbearing ambitions, competitive siblings, domineering parents, and the difficulty of intermarriage, that its easy to miss how powerful the statements these pieces make, but there is a strong political current that runs through the work, engaging, subtly of course as is Nandan’s way, with misogyny, binary thinking, colonialism and racism. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/05/a-review-of-through-the-trapdoor-by-kavita-ivy-nandan/

A review of Title: Comin’ ‘Round: Selected Writings by James Sherry

Comin’ ‘Round captures Sherry’s expansiveness, reflecting an artist’s breadth of vision, while dedicating himself to fostering literary community both in his ethos of connection through his own writing and in his support of fellow writers through his Segue reading series and publishing work. Sherry’s circularity invites, questions and encourages. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/04/a-review-of-title-comin-round-selected-writings-by-james-sherry/

A review of Bloodmercy by I.S. Jones

Jones’s poems are all told from the perspective of either Cain, Abel, or Eve. Bloodmercy is made up of six parts, including Cain’s opening prelude. Part two is mainly in the voice of Cain, except for one poem in Eve’s voice, “Contempt Towards Eden,” which begins, “Milton gets the tale about me wrong. Paradise is boring.” Part three contains ten poems, all in Abel’s voice. Part four switches between Cain and Abel, and Eve has one poem, “First Drought.” Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/03/a-review-of-bloodmercy-by-i-s-jones/

A review of Stars Like Salt by Cathy Altman

I love how “lacrimae rerum” opens with a visual image and immediately blends observation with emotional resonance. Like all of Altman poems the imagery is very rich and with meditative and elegiac tones. This poem creates a sense of memory beyond words. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/02/a-review-of-stars-like-salt-by-cathy-altman/

An interview with Tom Maremaa

The author of 2088 talks about his new book and how it came about, its theme, plot, characters, how 9/11 shaped the narrative, what readers can expect from the book and more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/01/an-interview-with-tom-maremaa-3/

A review of The Heart of the Advocate by Angela Costi

I used to think that legal language was the opposite of poetic language. In her latest poetry book, The Heart of the Advocate, Angela Costi shows that this dichotomy is a false one. Drawing on her experience as a legal advocate, Costi combines legal tropes with poetic techniques to powerful effect, reclaiming what she calls “fossilised legalese” in ways that concatenates the poetic themes of memory, migration, and nostalgia with activism, injustices, and trauma. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/09/01/a-review-of-the-heart-of-the-advocate-by-angela-costi/

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 3,605) 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 shortlist has been selected for the 2025 Cundill History Prize, administered by McGill University. The winner receives $cad75,000 and the two runners-up $cad10,000 each. Three finalists will be announced September 30 and the winner October 30. The shortlist: Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise by Emily Callaci (Allen Lane), A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under U.S. Occupation by Kornel Chang (The Belknap Press of Harvard University), The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut (Knopf), America, América: A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin (Penguin Press), To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press), Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War by Lyndal Roper (John Murray Press), The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life by Sophia Rosenfeld (Princeton University Press), and The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West by Martha A. Sandweiss (Princeton University Press).

The winners of the 2025 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards were announced on Friday 29 August at the State Library of Western Australia, sharing a prize pool of $120,000. Alan Fyfe was the winner of Book of the Year, sponsored by Writing WA, for his debut poetry collection G-d, Sleep, and Chaos, which also won Poetry Book of the Year. It was Fyfe’s third consecutive year being shortlisted and his first time taking home a prize. The judging panel described the book as “bold, fearless and purposeful” and recommended it as engaging read that is grounded in location and cultural moments. Check out our review of G-d, Sleep, and Chaos here: https://compulsivereader.com/2025/05/04/a-review-of-g-d-sleep-and-chaos-by-alan-fyfe/ The annual awards, administered and hosted by the State Library, honour the creativity and achievements of authors, illustrators and publishers who tell the story of Western Australia. For the full list visit: https://slwa.wa.gov.au/whats-on/awards-fellowships/wa-premiers-book-awards/2025-winners

The winners of the 2025 Heartland Booksellers Awards, who will be celebrated on October 14 at a ceremony hosted by Isaac Fitzgerald during the Heartland Fall Forum in Indianapolis, Ind., are: Fiction: The City in Glass by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom), Nonfiction: Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (Crash Course Books), Poetry: Anishinaabe Songs for a New Millennium by Marcie R. Rendon (University of Minnesota Press), YA/Middle Grade: Where Wolves Don’t Die by Anton Treuer (Arthur A. Levine), and Picture Book: How the Birds Got Their Songs, written by Travis Zimmerman, illustrated by Sam Zimmerman (Minnesota Historical Society Press).

The longlist has been selected for the 2025 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction. The shortlist will be announced on October 2 and the winner on November 4. This year’s longlist offers fresh insight into the lives, creative processes and legacy of the titans of art and culture, including an exploration of the iconic Lennon-McCartney relationship as well as biographies of Muriel Spark and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Other subjects include a range of twentieth century historical narratives that continue to define our geopolitical landscape and identities, from the long, tortuous relationship between Britain and the post war federal Europe, entered, life in Budapest before during and after The Second World War, the impact of China’s one-child policy, and the development of modern Afghanistan. To hear the announcement of the 12 longlisted titles, click here: https://youtu.be/W34vK8Tpcz0?si=bLqqPnVKXFDuHZwx

The Writers’ Trust of Canada has released a shortlist for the 2025 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, which is presented to ” the best debut book in any genre by a Canadian citizen or permanent resident who identifies as (but not limited to) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or Two-Spirit.” The winner, who will be named at the annual Writers’ Trust Awards in Toronto on November 13, receives C$12,000, while the remaining finalists get C$2,000 each. This year’s finalists are: How I Bend into More by Tea Gerbeza, All the Parts We Exile by Roza Nozari, and Three Parties by Ziyad Saadi.

Finalists have been selected for the 2025 McIlvanney Prizes, honouring the best Scottish crime books. The winner will be announced September 12 during Bloody Scotland, Scotland’s international crime writing festival. The finalists for the McIlvanney Prize are:
Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin, The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani, The Good Father by Liam McIlvanney, Paperboy by Callum McSorley, and The Good Liar by Denise Mina. The finalists for the McIlvanney Debut Prize are A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman, The Malt Whisky Murders by Natalie Jayne Clark, The Search for Othella Savage by Foday Mannah, Five by Five by Claire Wilson, and The Unrecovered by Richard Strachan.

In Australia, NSW History Week kicked off at the NSW State Library with $85,000 in prize money being awarded to some of Australia’s best contemporary historians and storytellers. Winners include Warra Warra Wai by Darren Rix and Craig Cormick (Scribner Australia, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Australia), Vector: A surprising story of space, time, and mathematical transformation by Robyn Arianrhod (UNSW Press/University of Chicago Press), Yirranma Place: Stories of a Darlinghurst corner by Alana Piper (NewSouth Publishing), Our History: Bold Ben Hall by Sophie Masson (Walker Books), One Mind, One Heart by Larissa Behrendt, Michaela Perske and Clare Wright (Pursekey Productions), and Rock and Tempest: Surviving Cyclone Tracy and its aftermath by Patricia Collins (Hachette Australia).

The National Book Foundation has released the longlists for the 2025 National Book Awards. Finalists will be announced October 7, and winners named November 19 at the National Book Awards Ceremony. This year’s longlisted titles in the Poetry and Nonfiction categories can be seen at: https://www.nationalbook.org/

Winners of the 2025 New England Book Awards, sponsored by the New England Independent Booksellers Association, were announced at the awards banquet at NEIBA’s fall conference. The winners are Fiction: The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett (Ballantine Books), Nonfiction: How to Love a Forest by Ethan Tapper (Broadleaf Books), Poetry: Super Gay Poems: LGBTQIA+ Poetry After Stonewall by Stephanie Burt (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), Young Adult: The Forbidden Book by Sacha Lamb (Levine Querido), Middle Grade: Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson (Scholastic), and Picture Book: Big Enough by Regina Linke (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).

Babylonia by Costanza Casati has won the 2025 £10,000 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, sponsored by the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation. Hand-picked from the six-strong shortlist featuring British, Filipino, Italian and Jamaican authors, Babylonia is the second consecutive historical fiction title to take home the Prize, following 2024’s winner, Saltblood by Francesca de Tores.

Winners have been chosen for the 2025 Wainwright Prize, celebrating nature, conservation, and environmental writing. This year, in addition to the individual category winners, two books have been chosen as the overall winners: Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton for the 2025 Wainwright Prize Book of the Year, and Flower Block by Lanisha Butterfield, illustrated by Hoang Giang, for the Wainwright Children’s Prize Book of the Year. The 2025 Wainwright Prize category winners are: Nature Writing: Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton, Conservation Writing: The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole, Illustrative Books: Feed the Planet by George Steinmetz with Joel K. Bourne Jr. & Michael Pollan, Children’s Fiction: Wildlands by Brogen Murphy, Children’s Nonfiction: University of Cambridge: Think Big: Secrets of Bees by Ben Hoare, illustrated by Nina Chakrabarti, and Children’s Picture Books: Flower Block by Lanisha Butterfield, illustrated by Hoang Giang. The two overall winning books received a prize of £2,500, with the picture book award jointly shared by its author and illustrator. Category winners were each awarded £500 per book.

Joint winners have been named for the 2025 Bread and Roses Award, organised by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers and hosted by Lighthouse: Edinburgh’s Radical Bookshop. This year’s prize, which celebrates “radical, accessible, and politically-left nonfiction which offers new perspectives and insights,” went to Pleasure Gardens: Blackouts and the Logic of Crisis in Kashmir by Skye Arundhati Thomas & Izabella Scott and Intervals by Marianne Brooker.

Six finalists have been selected for the 2025 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, honouring the “most exceptional debut novels” of the year. The winner will be announced October 9. The finalists: Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond (Flatiron), Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin (S&S/Summit Books), Tilt by Emma Pattee (S&S/Marysue Rucci), The Artist and the Feast by Lucy Steeds (Union Square), Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu (Little, Brown), and Maggie: Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee (S&S/Summit Books).

The shortlist has been chosen for the $5,000 Crook’s Corner Book Prize, honouring the best debut novel set in the American South. The winner will be announced in January. The finalists: Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell (Simon & Schuster), Oye by Melissa Mogollon (Hogarth), and Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura (Celadon Books).

The six-title shortlist has been released for the 2025 Booker Prize for Fiction. The winner, who will be be named on November 10 in London, receives £50,000. Each of the finalists gets £2,500. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Flesh by David Szalay, The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits, Audition by Katie Kitamura
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, and Flashlight by Susan Choi.

A shortlist has been released for the 2025 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Prize, which recognises “writers of exceptional talent for the best novel or short story collection of the year” in Canada. The winner, who will be named at the Writers’ Trust Awards in Toronto on November 13, receives C$70,000 and each finalist C$7,500. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand by Tim Bowling, Simple Creatures by Robert McGill, We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Endling by Maria Reva, and Julius Julius by Aurora Stewart de Peña.

Winners have been announced for the Dayton Literary Peace Prizes, which celebrate “writers whose work demonstrates the power of the written word to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding.” Sponsored by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, the prizes will be presented on November 9 at the Dayton Awards Gala. Salman Rushdie is the 2025 recipient of the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Random House) won the 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction. Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris (Knopf) was the runner-up in the fiction category. The Burning Earth: A History by Sunil Amrith (W.W. Norton) won the 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction. A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging by Lauren Markham (Random House) was the runner-up in the nonfiction category. The fiction and nonfiction winners each receive usd$10,000, and the fiction and nonfiction runners-up each receive usd$5,000.

Nalo Hopkinson won the C$3,000 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic for her novel Blackheart Man. The author is now a three-time winner of the prize, having previously taken the honours for Skin Folk (2003) and The New Moon’s Arms (2008).

Finally, Writing Australia has revealed the winners of the 2025 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, the richest literary prize in Australia.  The winners were celebrated at a ceremony at the National Library of Australia, Canberra hosted by Australian comedian, writer, actor, and television presenter, Alex Lee. For Australian History: Critical Care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia’s AIDS crisis by Geraldine Fela (Published by New South Publishing). For Children’s Literature, Leo and Ralph by Peter Carnavas (University of Queensland Press), for Fiction, Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser (Text Publishing), for Non-fiction, Mean Streak by Rick Morton (HarperCollins Publishing), for Young adult literature, The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland (Penguin Random House Australia), and for Poetry: The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems by David Brooks (University of Queensland Press).

Have a great month.

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Jean Feingold, who won a copy of Ultimart by Carl Wilhoyte.

Our new giveaway is for a copy of If the Owl Calls: A Novel by Sharon White. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “If the Owl Calls” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

We also have a 2 copies of Let the Fish Fly by By Ekta Bajaj to give away. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Let the Fish Fly” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

Good luck!

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