Letting It Rip in “Like Love: Essays and Conversations”

Letting It Rip in "Like Love: Essays and Conversations"

[ad_1] Towards the end of The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson writes that she considered writing a letter to her son before he was born but decided against it because it felt too much like an act of naming, or of “irrevocable classification, interpellation.” She briefly recalls Linda Hamilton at the end of The Terminator heroically recording … Read more

Love is a Mixtape Worth Living For in “I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both” – Chicago Review of Books

Love is a Mixtape Worth Living For in “I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both” – Chicago Review of Books

[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

On Love, Trauma, and Music in “Notes on Her Color” – Chicago Review of Books

On Love, Trauma, and Music in “Notes on Her Color” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Notes on Her Color is not only a debut novel by Jennifer Neal, but also a musical composition. Each word is a note carefully considered before being etched onto the page with the hope of bringing art to life and feelings to the surface. Gabrielle is a young woman living in hell. Her father … Read more

The Moral Sacrifices of Love in “Tell Her Everything” – Chicago Review of Books

The Moral Sacrifices of Love in “Tell Her Everything” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] By most accounts, one is considered a wild success if he grows up in poverty in a rural village in India and then overcomes the obstacles imposed by those circumstances to become become a surgeon in London, then a senior department leader in a hospital, and then retires in a riverside penthouse—the type of … Read more

The Chaos of Doomed Love in “Your Driver is Waiting” – Chicago Review of Books

The Chaos of Doomed Love in “Your Driver is Waiting” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Comparing a brand-new novel against an established piece of media is often tempting, but can be far from accurate without casting a broader lens. Your Driver is Waiting by Priya Guns has been described endlessly as a gender-bent Taxi Driver. And while there are similarities between the debut novel and the Robert DeNiro movie, … Read more

A Love Letter to the Imperfect Self in “Women Without Shame” – Chicago Review of Books

A Love Letter to the Imperfect Self in “Women Without Shame” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] American Book Award-winning author Sandra Cisneros has had a decades-long career publishing both prose and poems, and is perhaps most well known for her first book, The House on Mango Street, a novel told in vignettes. She often mixes Spanish and English, putting to words the in-betweenness of her dual U.S.-Mexico citizenship.  Woman Without … Read more

A Glimpse at the Inner Life of a Love Goddess in “Big Red” – Chicago Review of Books

A Glimpse at the Inner Life of a Love Goddess in “Big Red” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] I proudly call myself a fan of Old Hollywood, but until this year I had never seen a Rita Hayworth movie. I’d seen her famous pinup image for LIFE magazine, known vaguely of her as a 1940s “love goddess,” and watched clips of her in Gilda, but I’d never actually viewed any of her … Read more

Transdimensional Love in “End of the World House” – Chicago Review of Books

Transdimensional Love in “End of the World House” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] At the end of the world, Kate is Bertie’s best friend. In the aftermath of a world war, after enduring terror and loss together, they still have each other. Until Kate decides to move away—and Bertie is left to grapple with her own personal apocalypse. In End of the World House, Adrienne Celt delivers … Read more

Life, Art, and Fiction in “Love” – Chicago Review of Books

Life, Art, and Fiction in “Love” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] For all the antagonizing, ruminating, and even moralizing that comes with defining the parameters of literary fiction, perhaps the one point of (near-) universal agreement debators enjoy is over the notion that such a book should be in some way realistic, should faithfully reflect life and those who live it. How this is to … Read more

The Strangeness of Life vs. Fiction in “Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World” – Chicago Review of Books

The Strangeness of Life vs. Fiction in “Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Sasha Fletcher is a poet who has catapulted himself onto the fiction scene with his first novel, Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World. An unpolished description of the text could be the following: an absurdist, historical fiction love story set in the near future. Sam and Eleanor are an … Read more