For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] James—the latest novel from the prodigious (and finally widely-read) Percival Everett—is many things: a relentless code-switching satire, a meditation on the constructedness of racial identity, a love letter to the written word, and, yes, I suppose, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Before reading James, I imagined this review would likely hone … Read more
[ad_1] Science and technology make for strange gods in Benjamín Labatut’s The MANIAC. Picking up where his sensational When We Cease to Understand the World leaves off, The MANIAC finds Labatut concerned once again about the unruly limits of materialism. This is his first novel written in English and if one wants or expects a … Read more
[ad_1] When asked who he writes for in a recent interview, Brontez Purnell provided as good an answer as I’ve heard in years: “Ghosts” he said. And then, elaborating on his answer: “A bunch of disruptive faggots.” In his latest offering—100 Boyfriends—the two aren’t mutually exclusive. The narrator’s boyfriends are the book’s ghosts and its … Read more
[ad_1] If the saying is that “sex sells,” I feel confident that in the year 2020, politics may have stolen its mantle. In Docile, K. M. Szpara unites both. Pitched as a dystopian parable about love and sex, it centers around Elisha Wilder, a young man from rural Maryland whose family has been ruined by … Read more
[ad_1] At some point during my maiden reading of The Snow Collectors, I felt compelled to turn to the person sitting beside me and explain the book’s plot. This person—a friend who is by no means coy about taunting me for what she might deem my “less accessible” taste in novels—arched an eyebrow and said … Read more