For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Reading his biography, one gets the feeling that the Chilean writer Juan Emar could have walked right off the page of one of Roberto Bolaño’s kaleidoscopic capers about reclusive writers, fascist politics, and the international avant-garde. Indeed, Bolaño included a nod to Emar in The Savage Detectives, naming a Mexican bullfighters’ bar—the Peña Taurina … Read more
[ad_1] Rare are books that can truly – in the most genuine and interesting sense – be called experimental, but Alexandrian poet and writer Noor Naga’s first prose novel is one such rarity. Sharp, switched-on, and self-interrogating, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English masterfully continues, long after the last page is read, to provoke uncomfortable … Read more
[ad_1] Writing a book for mainstream publication is always an act of time travel. Given the gap between when a book is “finished” and when it actually appears in bookstores and libraries, the world in which you write the book is never quite the same world the book will be released into. As you write, … Read more
[ad_1] I, for one, celebrate the influx of recent fiction shining a light on motherhood. From Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers to Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, these works are getting more introspective and surreal in these waning pandemic days. Taking a different direction, one more rooted in reality and stark simplicity, is Chelsea Bieker’s … Read more
[ad_1] In Katya Kazbek’s debut novel Little Foxes Took Up Matches, eleven year-old Mitya strives to find his place in 1990s Moscow. As a toddler, Mitya swallowed his grandmother’s sewing needle without consequence, an event that led his family to conclude that he is doomed to an early, sudden death, but that Mitya himself takes … Read more
[ad_1] Millions of Italians arrived in the United States during the great wave of immigration from the 1880s until the Second World War. Dishes like spaghetti and meatballs, veal parmigiana, and oven-baked lasagna evolved during these years, yet Americans perceived these as the food of foreign ethnics with too much garlic. One dish would profoundly … Read more
[ad_1] Spring has finally sprung, dear readers, and along with the rain showers that tend to arrive in April there is a veritable downpour of great reads coming out this month. If you’re in need of a little guidance, never fear — we’ve got you covered here at the CHIRB, at least when it comes … Read more
[ad_1] Hannah Gadsby understands the value of context. In Nanette, her startling stand-up comedy show that was made into a Netflix special in 2018, she memorably provides additional context for Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. She recounts how she was once confronted by an audience member who, in the course of criticizing antidepressants, argued that if Van … Read more
[ad_1] “There is no way to tell the story of a great violence,” writes Candice Wuehle in the succinct introduction to her kaleidoscopic debut novel, MONARCH. The story that follows suggests the opposite is true: there are perhaps too many ways to tell the story of a great violence. As eerie revelations about the “blank … Read more
[ad_1] Over the course of thirty years, writer and teacher Sarah Fay received six different psychiatric diagnoses: anorexia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Only twelve when she was diagnosed with anorexia, Fay accepted the diagnosis and came to identify as an anorexic, reading and rereading Steven … Read more