Fiction Archive

Review: OUT OF THE BLUE: NEW SHORT FICTION FROM ICELAND Edited by Helen Mitsios

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These stories stray far from tourist brochure representations; they are not filled with glacial lagoons, ice caves, thermal pools, or Björk.

Review: EASTMAN WAS HERE by Alex Gilvarry

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In focusing on the interior life of a man in crisis, Gilvarry is able to speak to the beauty that can be found at the end of an existential crisis, at the end of middle age.

Review: LONESOME LIES BEFORE US by Don Lee

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Don Lee's latest novel proves to be a deceptively nuanced tale about the disconnect between our dreams and the limits of how far we'll go to obtain them.

Review: DEAR CYBORGS by Eugene Lim

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For Frank Exit, a man tasked with recovering the kidnapped children of a Japanese diplomat, gone are the days of a simple ransom request for money or a getaway vehicle.

Four Summer Books That Redefine the Beach Read

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Who says a good beach read can’t also be a book that packs some punch? Here are four of this summer’s best.

Review: LIVING IN THE WEATHER OF THE WORLD by Richard Bausch

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While not all of the fourteen stories in his new collection are a fair illustration of his ability, the balance demonstrates, once again, why he deserves a lasting place among American literary masters.

ERNESTO by Umberto Saba

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Umberto Saba died four years after writing Ernesto (1953), and it went unpublished until 1975 when its content would have been far less radical than in 1953.

Review: THE GYPSY MOTH SUMMER by Julia Fierro

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There are many hard edges here—a pervading sense of doom hovers throughout—but my favorite moments are when we get to see the softer, more interior side of these characters.

Review: THE WIDOW’S GUIDE TO EDIBLE MUSHROOMS by Chauna Craig

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Most of the stories in The Widow’s Guide to Edible Mushrooms, Chauna Craig’s debut collection, are set in the American West, centered on characters who often identify closely with their geography ... And while Craig convincingly portrays a range of characters, her work is particularly striking when she writes

Rural Pride in the Walleye Capital of the World: Emily Fridlund’s HISTORY OF WOLVES

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Loose River is a town where the two key descriptions of Christmastime are “competing nativity scenes” and the “strings of colored lights up and down Main Street.” Linda, the protagonist, thinks in terms of natural geography: her friend lives “in a trailer three lakes over.”