This Week’s Reviews

Neotenica
Joon Oluchi Lee | Nightboat Books | 9781643620206 | June 2020
“In this pandemic time—an endless moment of scarcity and paucity facilitated by a small few hoarding the earth’s wealth and resource—abundance is necessary, and Lee’s ample language suggests that examining subjectivity is a political act, as is his character’s navigating a queer Asian body through institutions like marriage, white supremacy, and the world.”—Brooklyn Rail

Easy Listening Acid Trip
Joseph Lanza | Feral House | 9781627310956 | November 2020

“A rather intoxicating companion to Elevator Music, Joseph Lanza’s seminal 1994 work, the square (in size and subject) Easy-Listening Acid Trip: An Elevator Ride Through ’60s Psychedelic Pop from the mighty Feral House is more spin-off than sequel, in which the author casts his ears and pen toward the flower-power era and its unlikely marriage of hippie music covered and co-opted by the chronically unhip. And thank God they did.”—Bookgasm

The Berlin Masterpieces in America
edit. Peter Jonathan Bell, Kristi A. Nelson | GILES | 9781911282631 | July 2020
“A compact and beautifully produced catalog.”— ARLIS/NA

Time
Etel Adan | Nightboat Books | 9781643620046 | June 2019
“Time is a place where language creates the meaningful space between souls, and the great threat to the truth. Time is a place where communication is sacred, where ‘love is the subversion of / death’, true living, and the body is a communicator of the self.”—Kenyon Review

Underworld Lit
Srikanth Reddy | Wave Books | 9781940696935 | August 2020
“These passages exist firmly in their own weirdness, while accumulating meaning. They stretch the book into a realm that spans prose and poetry; they ask for pause amid the momentum of plot.”—On the Seawall

The Sprawl
Jason Diamond | Coffee House Press | 9781566895828 | August 2020
“Diamond’s book is a supremely researched taxonomy of the American suburb. . . . His cataloging of suburban cultural touchstones is a crucial first step towards having a healthy conversation about the suburbs today.”—Ploughshares

Reason to Kill
Andy Weinberger | Prospect Park Books| 9781945551864 | August 2020

“Amos Parisman is one of the most unique PIs in literary history . . . a superb character study. . . . Parisman serves as a guide, leading readers from one crime scene to another while reflecting on mankind’s moral decay. His reflections on life are witty and insightful (and sometimes depressing). He provided me with many reasons for wanting to read future installments in the Amos Parisman Mystery series.”—Gumshoe Magazine

Raised by Wolves
Amang, trans. Steve Bradbury | Phoneme Media | 9781944700911 | September 2020

“Readers of this delightfully hybrid collection can only win. [Raised by Wolves] is an invitation to partake in a feast of words that agree to disagree, that clash and dissolve to reemerge in another language.”—Asymptote Journal

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