For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Five years after the death of her husband, visual artist Feyi Adekola is starting to come out of her shell, wondering if it’s possible to love again. After some casual dating, she starts a mostly platonic—but possibly more serious—relationship with Nasir Blake, a well-connected consultant. Feyi’s personal and professional lives are suddenly thrown into … Read more
[ad_1] Fasten your seatbelts and make sure you know where the oxygen masks are: John Waters’ first novel Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance is a hopscotching, subversive and full-versive, madcap version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Though I don’t want to spoil the plot’s twists and twists and twists—it’s a delicious literary strawberry Twizzler embedded with … Read more
[ad_1] A child walks into an abandoned house in the woods along with a dog no one else can see. He sits down at the wooden table, cups his chin, and looks around at the objects and furniture surrounding him, which were once useful and now stand strange and still. He thinks of the hands … Read more
[ad_1] Emily Pérez’s new book of poetry, What Flies Want, is a stunning look at the peripheries of womanhood and the recipient of the 2021 Iowa Poetry Prize. Her uniquely crafted poems spark fresh ideas about the trials of marriage, being female when every man is a “ticking bomb,” sexual harm, mental health, school violence, … Read more
[ad_1] In the first poem of the much-anticipated new collection from poet Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind, Limón wonders: “Why am I not allowed / delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts / on suffering”. The collection that follows is Limón’s response to the stranger, and an exhortation to the reader: as much about … Read more
[ad_1] A child walks into an abandoned house in the woods along with a dog no one else can see. He sits down at the wooden table, cups his chin, and looks around at the objects and furniture surrounding him, which were once useful and now stand strange and still. He thinks of the hands … Read more
[ad_1] “Some languages, but by no means all, have the luxury of the word ‘daughter,’ but in many—and French is one of them—your sex is not distinct from your relationship to your parents. You will only ever have this one word to describe your being and your lineage, your dependence and your identity.” This entwinement … Read more
[ad_1] Bud Smith is kind of a legend. The Jersey City writer has been publishing since 2009, but has been writing for much longer. Under his belt he’s got a story collection (Double Bird, Maudlin House), a poetry collaboration with his wife, Rae Buleri (Dust Bunny City, Disorder Press), a memoir (WORK, Civil Coping Mechanisms), … Read more
[ad_1] Welcome to another installment of a collaboration between the Chicago Review of Books and the Your Favorite Book podcast. Malavika Praseed, frequent CHIRB contributor and podcast host, seeks to talk to readers and writers about the books that light a fire inside them. What’s your favorite book and why? Our guest is Nghi Vo, … Read more
[ad_1] There are good reasons why love triangles appear so often in literary plots. Triangles are inherently unstable. They force characters to make choices through constant negotiation and compromise. As far as triangles go, the one in Lillian Fishman’s debut novel Acts of Service is a perfectly messy inquiry into the nature of power and … Read more