For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] The real world doesn’t deliver adversity in novel-sized chapters. Rarely do we enjoy perfect hindsight or the ability to glean meaning from violence or misfortune. In that sense, the unforgiving Ireland of Colin Barrett’s new novel, Wild Houses, feels uncomfortably familiar in its complexity and matter-of-fact ruthlessness. Barrett accomplishes much with an economy of … Read more
[ad_1] Radioactivity haunts Liliana Colanzi’s short stories. In You Glow in the Dark, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews, real-world poisons seep into her characters and their communities, and violence simmers in the air. Despite people’s attempts to reach for better, the world’s sharp edges tend to find them. Colanzi’s landscapes draw from corrupt, … Read more
[ad_1] When she moved to Toronto—not far from the windy, desolate plains where she grew up—Dawn thought she had escaped the traumas of her past. And yet, when her life doesn’t go as she hoped it would in the big city, she finds herself driving back to the small town of her childhood—where her mother … Read more
[ad_1] Toño the Infallible, a novel by the Colombian writer Evelio Rosero, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean and Victor Meadowcroft, is a shockingly twisted character study of one man’s malice towards society. Rosero explores the depths of remorseless hatred and how it grows when there is no balancing opposition to stop it. Set … Read more
[ad_1] True crime has a devoted following in a number of popular podcasts, films and television, and bestselling titles these days. There’s some debate about whether its predominantly female audience is empowered (learn about this to avoid finding oneself in a similar situation) or traumatized by learning details about gruesome murders, yet the mainstay of … Read more
[ad_1] I was first introduced to Willa C. Richards’s The Comfort of Monsters in a 2018 graduate-level writing workshop when Willa brought in two early chapters for discussion. It was the type of reading experience a reader never forgets. In the excerpt, the narrator Peg remembers going to a bar in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood … Read more
[ad_1] Antonin Artaud was one of the foundational voices in establishing the modern avant garde. His famous writings on The Theater and Its Double, and Theatre of Cruelty, place him alongside Breton and Brecht in creating the contemporary understanding of avant-garde practice. This new collection, Artaud the Mômo, draws from his last period of writing, … Read more