Racism and Masculinity in “Give My Love to the Savages” – Chicago Review of Books

Racism and Masculinity in “Give My Love to the Savages” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Chris Stuck knows what he’s doing. In Give My Love to the Savages, his debut short story collection, deliberation and intention shine through. These are stories centered around the anguishes of Black men, rendered here as both heroes and antiheroes. The stories are forthright with their unpacking of masculinity, grief, and identity. And at … Read more

See You in the Next Life in “Love Like Water, Love Like Fire” – Chicago Review of Books

See You in the Next Life in “Love Like Water, Love Like Fire” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] “Two deaths you cannot have and one you cannot avoid.” So goes a Russian saying Mikhail Iossel remembers in his excellent new collection Love Like Water, Love Like Fire. Funny thing about Iossel’s stories of Soviet life, though: they are filled with men and women living second lives, drunks who avoided death (to their … Read more

Missed Connections in “Dostoevsky in Love” – Chicago Review of Books

Missed Connections in “Dostoevsky in Love” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Across his fiction, journalism, and letters, Fyodor Dostoevsky spoke in many voices. He spoke as a radical who would face mock execution and years in prison for plotting against the tsar. He spoke as a Russian Orthodox believer excoriating liberal society for its smallness and lack of faith. He spoke as a prophet carrying … Read more

Grand, Transcendent Love in “Ridgerunner” – Chicago Review of Books

Grand, Transcendent Love in “Ridgerunner” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] A loner on the run is a Western literary genre trope, but Toronto poet and novelist Gil Adamson transforms it wholly in Ridgerunner, the follow-up to her debut novel, The Outlander. While the first book is a character study of nineteen-year-old Mary Boulton, a woman on the run from her brothers-in-law after she murders … Read more

6 Boy Mom Books I Love

6 Boy Mom Books I Love

[ad_1] The thing about boy mom books that I love the most is when they thread the needle between the mother’s wonderment at the very idea of raising a member of the boy species, and then an intense commitment to trying to speak “boy.” The books that I’ve chosen here are really about the art … Read more

A Love Letter to Adventurous Women in “The Arctic Fury” – Chicago Review of Books

A Love Letter to Adventurous Women in “The Arctic Fury” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Greer Macallister’s thrilling historical fiction novel, The Arctic Fury, is a love letter to adventurous women, unlikely friendships, and finding possibilities in a bleak, unforgiving wilderness. Set in the 1850s, a mysterious, wealthy woman hires guide Virginia Reeve to lead an expedition to find her husband lost in the Arctic North. The novel opens … Read more

Love and the Unknown in “To Be a Man” – Chicago Review of Books

Love and the Unknown in “To Be a Man” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] In the title story of Nicole Krauss’s fifth book and first collection of stories, To Be a Man, the narrative bends and breaks. Written in three sections with subsections, the narration shifts from first person to third, and then back to first. It’s only twenty-five pages. And it is as brilliant in execution as … Read more