For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Radioactivity haunts Liliana Colanzi’s short stories. In You Glow in the Dark, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews, real-world poisons seep into her characters and their communities, and violence simmers in the air. Despite people’s attempts to reach for better, the world’s sharp edges tend to find them. Colanzi’s landscapes draw from corrupt, … Read more
[ad_1] In her debut novel, Here in the Dark, prize-winning culture reporter and theater critic for the New York Times Alexis Soloski crafts a psychological thriller around Vivian Parry, a Manhattan-based theater critic notorious for her acerbic reviews and her predilection for mixing sex, booze, and pills to quell the anxiety and grief she feels … Read more
[ad_1] We like to think we are masters of our bodies and minds and, for the most part, we possess total agency and comprehension of our thoughts and actions. This assumption is embedded so thoroughly in our society that it seems unnecessary to even observe it. But that is exactly what the legendary Brazilian writer … Read more
[ad_1] Julia Fine is back. I wouldn’t say she necessarily went anywhere – she’s steadily published novels since her debut in 2018 – but with her most recent, Maddalena and the Dark, she’s triumphantly returning to your bookshelves with her signature dark feminist speculative fiction. And it’s a masterpiece. Set in 18th century Venice, Maddalena … Read more
[ad_1] Near the beginning of Juno Loves Legs, Juno’s mother—a poorly paid seamstress struggling to make ends meet for her two daughters and alcoholic husband in a Dublin housing estate in the 1980s—modifies her own wedding dress so Juno can wear it to her confirmation. When her mother is killed in a sudden accident before … Read more
[ad_1] A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames… Author’s note: This story contains fictional depictions of suicide and mention of harm to children. There was nothing remarkable about the photograph, no reason it should be the first to catch my … Read more
[ad_1] The opening chapter of Rachel Gillig’s debut novel One Dark Window, is itself a dark window, inviting readers to look into the misty woods where shadows stalk, explore the medieval town of Blunder with its superstitions and prejudices, and collect the arcane “Providence” cards (not unlike a Tarot deck or a set of Oracle … Read more
[ad_1] Narrative structure impacts when we take in information, and how we read a story. Doubtful Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go would have the same impact if we knew from page one what was happening, and surely Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony wouldn’t be as masterful if narrated linearly. In the same way, Michelle Hart’s … Read more
[ad_1] We’re living through rough times. Pandemics, climate change, volcanic eruptions—each sweeping horror seems worse than the last. In Kim Fu’s new collection of stories, Lesser Known Monsters Of The 21st Century, the horrors are more intimate, smaller, and less global in scale. This is not a collection filled with fantastic beasts, although a sea … Read more
[ad_1] In many ways, we are our experiences. We wake up, experience something, react to it, consider it, form thoughts on it, go to sleep, and wake up again. This continuity of thought—memory connecting point to point to point—is one of the ways we as people come to define ourselves, according to John Locke. Novels, … Read more