For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Lauren Groff’s new novel, The Vaster Wilds, is supposed to make you feel cold, hungry, thirsty, nauseated, sore, febrile, scared, awed, appalled, relieved, confused, hopeful, and tired of it all. The sensations are better effected than the emotions, which is the other way round from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, a novel cited by Lauren Groff … Read more
[ad_1] It’s fittingly difficult to pin down Colleen Burner’s debut novel, or novella, Sister Golden Calf. At once fragmented and expansive, set in the recognizable territory of New Mexico’s highways but also infused with magical realism, the book resists categorization. The protagonists, sisters Kit and Gloria, know a thing or two about capturing the ineffable: … Read more
[ad_1] We’re Safe When We’re Alone, Nghiem Tran’s new novella, is dreamlike and imaginative, thrusting us into the world of ghosts and memories. Every character is given a familial label instead of a name, such as Son, the young protagonist, who is forced to adjust outside of his isolation and out into this ominous world. … Read more
[ad_1] Glitter and Concrete: A Cultural History of Drag in New York City examines drag performance from the 19th Century through the contemporary era, from broad cultural trends to the individual experiences of performers. Elyssa Maxx Goodman dives into language, legalities, and the ebb and flow of perceptions. I first met Goodman a year ago … Read more
[ad_1] Rarely do you read a novel that makes you want to get up and finish that essay you’ve let sit idle in your word document for months. Even more rarely do you read a novel that reminds you why you became a writer in the first place. Nathan Hill’s debut, The Nix, took the … Read more
[ad_1] I dance to save myself, and find / Swimming in sweat, it’s in our common breath I fly. Paul Verlaine On the morning of June 13, 2016, I woke up to a text reading “did you hear the news?” The day before, Omar Mateen had shot up the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, killing 49 … Read more
[ad_1] The Midwestern town of Ephrem, Illinois, is a place that exists only in author Janice Deal’s imagination. But in her beautifully woven linked story collection Strange Attractors: The Ephrem Stories, the town and its residents are so completely realized I found myself poking around Google maps, trying to determine which actual place it might … Read more
[ad_1] Reading Ben Lerner’s new collection of poems, The Lights, I was reminded of a couplet from his 2004 debut, The Lichtenberg Figures: “I wish all difficult poems were profound. / Honk if you wish all difficult poems were profound.” With The Lights, Lerner has made good on this wish: for whatever difficulty the poems … Read more
[ad_1] As a crime fiction writer and fan, I always get excited when a new Laura Lippman book is announced. When I heard that Prom Mom was on the way, I leapt to snag an opportunity to read it and ask Lippman a few questions. Turns out, I did that last time a new Laura … Read more
[ad_1] In Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, historian Dylan Penningroth points to the journey towards civil rights for Black Americans beginning “in the fields and cabins of slaves.” Here, in the thick of Antebellum slavery, slaves crafted a knowledge of the law through acts such as accumulation and claims of … Read more