Compulsive Reader

Compulsive Reader News
maggieball@compulsivereader.com
http://www.compulsivereader.com
Volume 26, Issue 6, 1 June 2024

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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 Beyond the Shores by Tamara J Walker

Beyond the Shores is well worth your time and attention. It would be so even if it were not so well written and compiled as it is. These are stories that need to be heard. Stories that the American story is a lie without. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/30/a-review-of-beyond-the-shores-by-tamara-j-walker/

A review of Heimlich Unheimlich by Hazel Smith and Sieglinde Karl-Spence

The short book is beautifully written and visually arresting, combining memoir, imagery, fiction, poetry, and the linking of two very different lives that meld and weave together like the names they give themselves – Hessian and Muslin. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/28/a-review-of-heimlich-unheimlich-by-hazel-smith-and-sieglinde-karl-spence/

A review of The Hand of Fate: a review of Unbound by Sinead McGuigan

Every story, every journey has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So with this fine book of poems. Its end is a reaching out. To whom? Herself, to other women, to humanity. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/26/a-review-of-the-hand-of-fate-a-review-of-unbound-by-sinead-mcguigan/

Boxed in to Today: A review of Apartmentalized by Dan Flore II

Paradoxically, the poet is at home and not at home, as alienated from himself as he is from his apartment and the complex of apartments in these poems. As a sequence they have a structure of irony. The poet’s self-conflict is expressed in his descriptions of neighbors and people who work at the complex. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/22/boxed-in-to-today-a-review-of-apartmentalized-by-dan-flore-ii/

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. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/19/a-review-of-the-leaves-by-jacqueline-rule/

A review of Shore Lines by Andrew Taylor

In all of Taylor’s poems the imagery is rich and detailed. Some of the poems take reflective turns, with themes of nostalgia and memory, often juxtaposing the strength of nature with human vulnerability and the persistence of memory. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/18/a-review-of-shore-lines-by-andrew-taylor/

Cherry Blossoms Outside the Madhouse: A review of Splinter of the Moon by Wayne Russell

Throughout, and within the poet, there is the ideal and the real. Often the real falls short, but sometimes as in “Room,” “That Defining Moment,” and “That Poem for Her” the real is on an equal plane with the ideal. While there are dream images in poems, there is also reality, the reality of the poet being honest with himself and his readers. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/16/cherry-blossoms-outside-the-madhouse-a-review-of-splinter-of-the-moon-by-wayne-russell/

A Review of Ready or Not by Cara Bastone

From her corner in Brooklyn, Cara Bastone is able to highlight a new take on a New York romance in her new novel, Ready or Not, featuring the twists and turns of a surprise pregnancy, friendship struggles, and the bustling life of a career. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/13/a-review-of-ready-or-not-by-cara-bastone/

A review of Days of Grace and Silence by Ann E. Wallace

Days of Grace And Silence, Ann E. Wallace’s profoundly moving and necessary poetry collection on living through Long Covid, makes us remember the things we may want to forget. And how important it is not to forget, as she writes, I fight to remember the story/ of me. Even though each of our stories are different, Wallace’s poems shed light on our own. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/12/a-review-of-days-of-grace-and-silence-by-ann-e-wallace/

A review of earthwork by Jill Khoury

horse is a metaphor. It represents inner self, yearning for movement, kindness, courage, grace, leadership. There has to be trust and respect between the master and the friendly beast, a delicate line representing boundaries. It is a mirror that reflects the environment and also treatment of the master towards one’s horse. There is mystery in that amazing hard-earned trust. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/10/a-review-of-earthwork-by-jill-khoury/

A review of The Club of True Creators By Milan Tripović

The reason for this weirdness is found on a note on the publisher’s website, explaining that the translation was “AI-assisted” with “every word of the AI-generated translation … weighed by a professional stylist”. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/09/a-review-of-the-club-of-true-creators-by-milan-tripovic/

On Characterization and Place in Poetry: A conversation between Tennison Black and Tiffany Troy

Tennison S. Black is the author of Survival Strategies (UGA Press, 2023), which won the National Poetry Series. Tiffany Troy is author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]) and co-translator of Santiago Acosta’s The Coming Desert /El próximo desierto (forthcoming, Alliteration Publishing House). In this warm, rich conversation, the two poets talk about their latest books, journey, history, characterization, voice, legacy, craft and much more. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/08/on-characterization-and-place-in-poetry-a-conversation-between-tennison-black-and-tiffany-troy/

A review of The Fullness By Omar Musa

There are many collaborations on this album. Chief collaborator, Paperboy, has a wonderful sense of Musa’s linguistic and delivery skills, and the sound takes its cue from poetry/jazz fusion masters like Gil Scott Heron and Amiri Baraka – vocals and instruments working in a synchronicity that feels both polished and improvisational. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/06/a-review-of-the-fullness-by-omar-musa/

A review of Homelight by Lola Haskins

Elegant in their refined, fluent use of words and eloquent in their visions and messages, these are luminous poems. While some poems are nearly haiku-short, others contain many stanzas, yet all resonate with beguiling, stirring words from a poet with a close connection to the natural world and an intense perceptiveness. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/05/a-review-of-homelight-by-lola-haskins/

A review of Seeing Through by Ricky Ian Gordon

Even in the midst of this plague and the terrible death of so many beautiful people, most of whom I had a crush on as a teenager, there is always humour and a sense of the creative transformation which makes this book a constant joy to read. Ricky’s descriptions are so apt, darkly funny and full of delicious gossip, you want to commit them to memory for re-use. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/03/a-review-of-seeing-through-by-ricky-ian-gordon/

A review of Turn Up the Heat by Ruth Danon

Light and heat serve as central metaphors for comfort. They represent the warmth Danon so desperately craves as an antidote to the cold she fears. Her fear is deeply rooted in the uncertainty and anxiety that accompany illness and hospitalization. Read more: https://compulsivereader.com/2024/05/02/a-review-of-turn-up-the-heat-by-ruth-danon-2/

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 3,337) which can be browsed or searched from the front page of the site.

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LITERARY NEWS

In the literary news this month, an 18-title longlist has been released for this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, which celebrates “excellence, originality and the very best in crime fiction” by U.K. and Irish authors. The prize is run by Harrogate International Festivals and sponsored by T&R Theakston Ltd, in partnership with WH Smith and the Daily Express. A shortlist will be announced June 13, with the winner revealed July 18 on the opening night of Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. The winner receives £3,000 and an engraved oak beer cask, hand-carved by one of Britain’s last coopers from Theakston’s Brewery in Masham. Check out the complete longlist here: https://harrogatetheakstoncrimeaward.com/

The Writers’ Union of Canada has released a shortlist for the C$10,000 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, which recognizes “a Canadian writer for the best first collection of published short fiction in the English language.” Two finalists are also awarded C$1,000 each. The winners will be named June 11 on TWUC’s Facebook Live. This year’s shortlisted titles are: Cocktail by Lisa Alward, Her Body Among Animals by Paola Ferrante, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia, Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler, and The Private Apartments by Idman Nur Omar.

Alexis Wright has won the Stella Prize for her epic work Praiseworthy, described by the judges as ‘a canon-crushing Australian novel for the ages’. In winning the Stella for Praiseworthy, Wright has become the first author to win the award twice, having previously received it in 2018 for Tracker, her collective memoir of Aboriginal leader Tracker Tilmouth.
Praiseworthy has also won the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction, and is currently shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. It is published internationally in the United Kingdom and North America.

Winners of the 2024 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America and honouring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television, were announced. These include, for Best Novel: Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Best First Novel by an American Author: The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry (Atria Books), and Best Paperback Original: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto (Berkley). For the full list visit: https://mysterywriters.org/mwa-announces-the-2024-edgar-award-winners/

The shortlist has been selected for the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, which “celebrates quality, innovation and ambition of writing,” and is open to books first published in the previous year in the U.K., Ireland, or the Commonwealth. The majority of the story must have taken place at least 60 years ago. The winner will be announced June 13. The shortlist: The New Life by Tom Crewe, Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein, My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor, In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas, Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain, and The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng.

The 2024 Pulitzer Prizes have been announced. The fiction winner was Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (Knopf). For Poetry, Tripas: Poems by Brandon Som (Georgia Review Books). For the full list of prize winners visit: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2024

Ben Fountain has won the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, sponsored by the New Literary Project and honouring “a mid-career author of fiction in the midst of a burgeoning career, a distinguished writer who has emerged and is still emerging.” The award has a $50,000 prize, and Fountain will spend a brief residence at the University of California, Berkeley, and in the Bay Area, where he may give public readings and talks, teach classes, and make appearances. Fountain is the author of Devil Makes Three (Flatiron, 2023) and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ecco, 2012), which was adapted for film by Oscar winner Ang Lee. His short stories and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Harper’s, the Paris Review, Esquire, the Guardian, Le Monde (France), Reporto Sexto Piso (Mexico), and Intranqui’illites (Haiti), among others.

Guatemalan author Eduardo Halfon has won the 2024 Berman Literature Prize, which honours “an author whose works embody the statutes of the Prize, in the spirit of the Jewish tradition and literary works aiming to explore the rich Jewish culture and at the same time exceed times and cultures thereby striving for the universally human.” The award is 750,000 Swedish kronor. Organisers focused on Halfon’s novel Canción, published in 2021, in which “an author called Eduardo Halfon is invited to a conference for Lebanese authors in Japan and begins reflecting on his Jewish paternal grandfather’s Syrian-Lebanese background and dramatic kidnapping by Guatemalan guerillas in the 1960s.”

V.V. Ganeshananthan has been named the winner of the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her novel Brotherless Night (Random House). Managed by the Carol Shields Foundation and with an award of $150,000, the prize celebrates “creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the U.S.” Ganeshananthan is also the author of Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Her work has appeared in Granta, the New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota and co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub.

Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman (Semiotex(t)e) has won the £10,000 2024 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, given to “a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place.” First awarded in 2004, the premise and broad remit of the Prize creates unique lists of outstanding works and authors that you would not usually find sitting side by side.

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. This year there were several firsts in the history of the prizes, both in the biography category. For the first time, there were two winners of the biography prize, and also for the first time, an author and translator jointly won a prize. The winner of the fiction prize is Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (published in the U.S. by New Directions). The joint winners of the biography prize are Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger (Transit Books), and Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman (Semiotext(e)).

Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo (Bloomsbury) has won the 2024 Plutarch Award for the Best Biography of 2023.

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson (published in the U.S. by Grove Press) has won the 2024 Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, honouring works of fiction by authors around the world aged 39 or under. The Prize has a £20,000 award. Open Water, the British-Ghanaian writer’s first novel, was shortlisted for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize in 2022.

The winners of the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards were announced at a ceremony held at the State Library of NSW on Monday 20 May. A total of $315,000 in prize money was presented to this year’s winners across 12 award categories. Yankunytjatjara poet and artist Ali Cobby Eckermann’s verse novel She is the Earth took out Book of the Year, as well as the Indigenous Writers’ Prize. This is the second time Cobby Eckermann has won this prestigious award, having also won the honour in 2013 for her verse novel Ruby Moonlight. For the full list of winners, and to watch the ceremony or read the judge’s report visit: https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/about/awards-fellowships/awards

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann, has won the 2024 International Booker Prize. The author and translator are splitting the £50,000 prize. Erpenbeck is the first German to win the first International Booker, and Hofmann is the first male translator to win.

Perpetual, the trustee of the A$60,000 Miles Franklin Literary Award, has released this year’s longlist celebrating “novels of the highest literary merit that tell stories about Australian life.” The longlisted titles are: Only Sound Remains by Hossein Asgari, Wall by Jen Craig, Strangers at the Port by Lauren Aimee Curtis, Anam by André Dao
The Bell of the World by Gregory Day, Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko, The Sitter by Angela O’Keeffe, Hospital by Sanya Rushdi, Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, and Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright.

The International Publishers Association has released the shortlist for the Prix Voltaire, which honours “exceptional courage in upholding the freedom to publish… without which many forms of freedom of expression would be impossible.” The laureate, who receives CHF10,000 will be named in December at the International Publishers Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. This year’s shortlist includes: Osman Kavala, co-founder of Ana Publishing and İletişim Publishing (Turkey), Dušan Gojkov, Balkan Literary Herald (Serbia), Aslambek Ezhaev, Ummah Publishing (Russia), Andrej Januskevic, Andrej Januskevic Publishing (Belarus), and Samir Mansour, Samir Mansour Bookshop for Printing and Publishing (Palestine).

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter (Deep Vellum) has won the €100,000 Dublin Literary Award, which is sponsored by Dublin City Council to honor a single work of fiction published in English. The announcement was made as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin. Nominations are chosen by librarians and readers from a network of libraries around the world. The author, who is Romanian, receives €75,000, and the translator, who is American, receives €25,000.

Finally, Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal (Simon & Schuster) has won the $15,000 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, which is given to an emerging African American fiction writer, celebrates the legacy of the late Ernest Gaines, and is sponsored by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.

Have a great month.

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COMPETITION NEWS

Congratulations to Annette Estell, who won a copy of The Alone Time by Elle Marr.

Congratulations to Kathleen Gardiner, who won a copy of Night of the Hawk by Lauren Martin.

Our new site giveaway this month is for a copy of Sweet & Savory Life by Yecinia Currie. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Sweet & Savory” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

We also have a copy of For You I Would Make An Exception by Steven Belletto. To win, send me an email at maggieball@compulsivereader.com with the subject line “Exception” and your postal address in the body of the mail.

Good luck!

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