This Week’s Reviews

Reinhardt’s Garden
Mark Haber | Coffee House Press | 9781566895620 | October 2019
“Hilarious and thrilling. . . this novel may look like something new, but it reads like that timeless treat, a rollicking good yarn”—Star Tribune

A Little More Red Sun
Gillian Conoley | Nightboat Books | 9781643620114 | October 2019

“Gillian Conoley’s A Little More Red Sun on the Human uses silence, rupture, and elision to reveal grammar as one possible way of organizing thought among many.”—Los Angeles Review of Books Blog
“[Conoley’s] work encourages analysis of the meaning of our lives as humans, our place in constructed society and forced imposition on nature. The weight of our sins and choices lay heavily upon us as a collective; these poems are lights illuminating our individual responsibilities.”—Vagabond City Lit

The Death of Baseball
Orlando Ortega-Medina | Cloud Lodge Books | 9781999587352 | November 2019 
“A tight, Gothic tale of rejection, personal struggle, and acceptance.”—Foreword Reviews

Animal Sutras: Animal Spirit Stories
Stephen Levine | Monkfish Book Publishing | 9781948626064 | September 2019
“These memoirs, essays, and poems comprise an openhearted, vulnerable, sometimes apologetic, and often humorous exploration of the mystical importance of animals in the cultivation of meaning and purpose in our lives, and how they can teach us compassion and empathy.”—Creations Magazine

Creating Characters for the Entertainment Industry: Develop Spectacular Designs from Basic Concepts
Kenneth Anderson | 3dtotal Publishing | 9781909414860 | October 2019
“This is an insightful book with real world application. Great for those who want to get serious with character design.”—Park Blogs

The Aosawa MurdersRiku Onda, trans. Alison Watts | Bitter Lemon Press | 9781912242245 | February 2020 
“This is a splendid work of fiction with a fascinating plot by a very careful and talented writer.”—Durango Telegraph
“Riveting. . . . The Aosawa Murders is an intricate and devastating search for the facts behind a complicated crime.”—Foreword Reviews

Whose Story Is This? : Old Conflicts, New Chapters
Rebecca Solnit | Haymarket Books | 9781642590180 | September 2019
“A thought-provoking and accessible exploration of the roles social and cultural narratives play in our thinking about gender, race, history and more.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Step into the Circle : Writers in Modern Appalachia
Edit. Amy Greene and Trent Thomson | Blair | 9781949467123 | December 2019

“With Step into the Circle, editors Amy Greene and Trent Thomson present their own nuanced vision, bringing together Appalachian writers and photographers to profile some of the region’s most beloved literary forces. . . . Generosity of spirit permeates this book, owing to the deep respect these profilers show for their subjects.”—Chapter 16

Beautiful Aliens
Steve Abbott, edit. Jamie Townsend | Nightboat Books | 9781643620152 | December 2019
“Whatever his genre—prose, poetry, or comics—Abbott wrote from the margins, a position inseparable from his own queerness, and one that gave political and moral credence to his work. As one of the key figures of New Narrative, he was at the center of a West Coast literary uprising that saw little distinction between writing and socializing; both connect the messy lone consciousness to the rest of the world.”—4Columns

When I Arrived at the Castle
Emily Carroll | Koyama Press | 9781927668689 | April 2019
“I loved the mix of familiar horror tropes, dramatic art and feminist themes in this graphic novella, and look forward to Carroll’s next work.”—Geist

Song for the Unraveling of the World
Brian Evenson | Coffee House Press | 9781566895484 | June 2019
“[Evenson’s prose is] coldly beautiful, like a meticulously sketched fractal pattern.”—Rain Taxi

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *