For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Where are your roots? How does language—that which you speak and that which speaks through you, if not literally then ancestrally—shift your identity and place in the world at large, and in your own community? Diego Báez’s collection Yaguareté White is an assured and intelligent debut that is lyrical and powerful, sharply examining such … Read more
[ad_1] Leslie Jamison’s Empathy Exams came to me nestled amidst a pile of Little Debbie’s Fudge Rounds—gifts my friends had chosen to soothe the pain of my recent miscarriage. I had no expectations of Jamison when I left my first chocolate smudges on the covers of her debut essay collection. My lack of preparation made … Read more
[ad_1] Love is a dangerous and frustrating emotion for Mariah Stovall’s main characters in her novel, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both. Khaki Oliver is a socially awkward Black woman who was born punk. She mostly interacts with the world through the lens of music as evidenced by the book’s title, which … Read more
[ad_1] First, I think we need to get Barbenheimer out of the way. I very much doubt that Scott Guild intended Plastic, his debut novel about life-sized plastic figurines and the nuclear Armageddon that threatens them, to come so close on the heels of Greta Gerwig’s and Christopher Nolan’s films. It’s a fascinating accident, though: … Read more
[ad_1] If, in an alternate—though mostly unchanged—version of Japan, you were to peruse a certain magazine, reading carefully, your eyes might pause in their search at an ad that reads “Kamogawa Detective Agency: We Find Your Food.” No contact details or, for that matter, details of any kind would follow. But if you’re enterprising enough, … Read more
[ad_1] “Huge, dizzying, clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairytale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful…” In … Read more
[ad_1] In Andrew Ewell’s debut novel, Set for Life, our unnamed narrator is a tenure-less creative writing professor at a middling college in upstate New York. He’s been riding the coattails of his wife/colleague/benefactor’s literary success for years and, as he approaches 40, he has yet to make good on his own writerly promise in … Read more
[ad_1] When I started reading GennaRose Nethercott’s short story collection Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: and Other Stories, I was struck by the evocative description that these stories were about “the abomination that resides within us all.” Nethercott’s characters yearn for something missing in their lives, often love—but also a purpose, an answer, or … Read more
[ad_1] When I started reading GennaRose Nethercott’s short story collection Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: and Other Stories, I was struck by the evocative description that these stories were about “the abomination that resides within us all.” Nethercott’s characters yearn for something missing in their lives, often love—but also a purpose, an answer, or … Read more
[ad_1] Adriana Riva’s latest novel concerns itself with the mother/daughter question: do we know them? Do they see us? Translated by Denise Kripper and published by Veliz Books, Salt depicts a pregnant Ema as she tries to close the ever-growing gap between herself and her mother. Despite residing in the same home, the two women … Read more