For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Emily Pérez’s new book of poetry, What Flies Want, is a stunning look at the peripheries of womanhood and the recipient of the 2021 Iowa Poetry Prize. Her uniquely crafted poems spark fresh ideas about the trials of marriage, being female when every man is a “ticking bomb,” sexual harm, mental health, school violence, … Read more
[ad_1] For over 25 years, the Wild Cards universe has been entertaining readers with stories of superpowered people in an alternate history. In Emma Newman’s “Hearts of Stone”, a young woman learns how to control her deadly powers from an unlikely ally. Kerry —a.k.a Stonemaiden— is a monster. Or at least… she thinks she is. … Read more
[ad_1] In the first poem of the much-anticipated new collection from poet Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind, Limón wonders: “Why am I not allowed / delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts / on suffering”. The collection that follows is Limón’s response to the stranger, and an exhortation to the reader: as much about … Read more
[ad_1] A child walks into an abandoned house in the woods along with a dog no one else can see. He sits down at the wooden table, cups his chin, and looks around at the objects and furniture surrounding him, which were once useful and now stand strange and still. He thinks of the hands … Read more
[ad_1] “Some languages, but by no means all, have the luxury of the word ‘daughter,’ but in many—and French is one of them—your sex is not distinct from your relationship to your parents. You will only ever have this one word to describe your being and your lineage, your dependence and your identity.” This entwinement … Read more
[ad_1] Bud Smith is kind of a legend. The Jersey City writer has been publishing since 2009, but has been writing for much longer. Under his belt he’s got a story collection (Double Bird, Maudlin House), a poetry collaboration with his wife, Rae Buleri (Dust Bunny City, Disorder Press), a memoir (WORK, Civil Coping Mechanisms), … Read more
[ad_1] Welcome to another installment of a collaboration between the Chicago Review of Books and the Your Favorite Book podcast. Malavika Praseed, frequent CHIRB contributor and podcast host, seeks to talk to readers and writers about the books that light a fire inside them. What’s your favorite book and why? Our guest is Nghi Vo, … Read more
[ad_1] There are good reasons why love triangles appear so often in literary plots. Triangles are inherently unstable. They force characters to make choices through constant negotiation and compromise. As far as triangles go, the one in Lillian Fishman’s debut novel Acts of Service is a perfectly messy inquiry into the nature of power and … Read more
[ad_1] “There’s a way to be playful even in times of really terrible doubt,” posits the narrator of Ali Smith’s new novel Companion Piece. It’s hard to think of an author more playful than Smith, whose work consistently breaks the conventional rules of contemporary fiction as taught in most American MFA programs—with consistently incandescent results. … Read more
[ad_1] Conception is a dynamic process of bringing the self and the other into that most intimate proximity. If books about motherhood and pregnancy constitute a literary genre, then conception—and its conceptual location between sexual reproduction and artistic production—is this genre’s most frequent trope. For English-speaking readers, Rivka Galchen’s 2016 Little Labors and Sheila Heti’s … Read more