For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] When Laura Chow Reeve and I first met in 2022, we were students at the same low-residency MFA program, Randolph College. We workshopped pieces of novels in progress and learned from many brilliant faculty mentors. Now, in 2024, Laura is a graduate of the program and is celebrating the publication of her debut short … Read more
[ad_1] Despite what its title suggests, Soraya Palmer’s debut novel, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, does not limit its focus to the title character. Instead, it encompasses the family she helped create. A mysteriously knowledgeable narrator fills in some of the gaps with information about Beatrice, and her husband Nigel, … Read more
[ad_1] While Gayle Brandeis was writing her best-known book, The Art of Misdiagnosis, she attended a retreat at St. Mary’s Art Center in Virginia City, Nevada. Settling into her Victoriana room for the weekend, she prepared to transcribe her mother’s documentary, the last artwork her mother produced before hanging herself. Brandeis didn’t believe in the … Read more
[ad_1] The ghosts of Dennis Mombauer’s The House of Drought are many, as many as there are allegories. The established fact of extraction, the ritual of sacrifice, the deviance of the unknown—these are its themes. None of these beasts are as powerful as the global narrative that has already been spinning: the irreversibility of climate … Read more
[ad_1] Peter Rock’s latest novel, Passersthrough, is tricky business. The premise hints at mystery—a young girl goes missing in the wilderness for a week; now, 25 years later, her father wants answers—but the novel itself resists practically every convention of the genre. It reads more like a ghost story—unsettling, ruminative, impressionistic, somewhat like Jeff VanderMeer’s … Read more
[ad_1] Ruins are scars. Some are in the process of healing, succumbing to gravity, dirt, and time, covered in roots and soon to be buried. Others still hurt, poking at the sky, or, more pointedly, at the transformation and defacing of a people’s dignity. No matter their state of decay, the remnants of buildings, monuments, … Read more